“He was about as stupid as an animal could be and still live.”

“And he saw it in her eyes. Still. The belief that there could be someone other than herself. You, he wanted to shout. You. No one but you. Stupid, stupid girl.”

“My anger is ebbing away now, replace with a crazy grief for the stupid, dumb, trysting animal, who was running too fast and didn't look where it was going and still -even after its leg was scissored in the trap- believed it might escape. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“I could end this with a moral,as if this were a fable about animals,though no fables are really about animals.”

“Would the last animal, eating garbage and living on the last scrap of land, his mate dead, would he still forgive you?”

“But it was pointless, it was stupid; he thought about thoughtless things. If I were a seabird . . . but how could you be a seabird? If you were a seabird your brain would be tiny and stupid and you would love half-rotted fish guts and tweaking the eyes out of little grazing animals; you would know no poetry and you could never appreciate flying as fully as the human on the ground yearning to be you.If you wanted to be a seabird you deserved to be one.”