“All it means is that, while our minds may have trouble communicating, our bodies don't have any problem at all." "I don't think it's that simple." "Sure it is." "The earth moved," she said softly. "That has to be more than bodies communicating.”

“We are the intelligent elite among animal life on earth and whatever our mistakes, [Earth] needs us. This may seem an odd statement after all that I have said about the way 20th century humans became almost a planetary disease organism. But it has taken [Earth] 2.5 billion years to evolve an animal that can think and communicate its thoughts. If we become extinct she has little chance of evolving another.”

“The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.”

“Our bodies communicate to us clearly and specifically, if we are willing to listen.”

“No writer in our time has been more isolated than Kafka, and yet few have achieved communication as well as he did.”

“What worries me the most,' she continued, 'is the opposite, the possibility that they're not trying. They could communicate with us, all right, but they're not doing it because they don't see any point to it. It's like..."--she glanced down at the edge of the tablecloth they had spread over the grass--"like the ants. They occupy the same landscape that we do. They have plenty to do, things to occupy themselves. On some level they're very well aware of their environment. But we don't try to communicate with them. So I don't think they have the foggiest notion that we exist.”