“Imagine a forty-five-year-old male fifty feet long, a slim, shiny black animal cutting the surface of green ocean water at twenty knots. At fifty tons it is the largest carnivore on earth. Imagine a four-hundred-pound heart the size of a chest of drawers driving five gallons of blood at a stroke through its aorta; a meal of forty salmon moving slowly down twelve-hundred feet of intestine…the sperm whale’s brain is larger than the brain of any other creature that ever lived…With skin as sensitive as the inside of your wrist.”
“It was magic, the oldest magic of all when day became night, gods working in tandem, and I gave it the full benefit of my witness for the singular wonder it was.”
“All of nature was a record of crisis and destruction and adaptation and flourishing and being knocked back down again. What had happened on New Terra was singular and concrete, but the pattern it was part of seemed to apply everywhere and maybe always.”
“No animal could change the character of the land as the presence of the wolf had that day.”
“Up past the old lime kiln built into the side of a hill we take a hard right at a clearing lined by brittle apple trees still willing to bear fruit. I snap sticks beneath my feet and steal pictures of the view while you reach for something sweet, as much as it bows to you.”
“In all my paintings, the animal is at the centre. Surrounding it are the things that define the animal. This is how beauty is characterized. You need to characterize beauty by association. I have learned to worship beauty. Not ordinary beauty but that in its stormiest nature.”
“A poet warrior realizes both the brutality and the beauty in life, and apprehends that the suffering we tragically endure is partly what makes us human. What also makes us human is the ability to love, the ability to stand in nature’s presence, and to nurture this earthly paradise to tend to our family’s needs.”
“... and isn t the world a treasure in itself? A spectacle glittering every single day, without a concern if anyone s watching or not. It simply goes on, elegantly, letting nature have its way. We only need to open our eyes to witness the biggest masterpiece ever created, the ticket is already in your hand.”
“To make them forget how bad human beings are, they were taught too insistently that bears are good. Instead of being told honestly what humans are and what bears are.”
“The clouds had gathered, within the last half-hour. The light was dull; the distance was dim. The lovely face of Nature met us, soft and still and colourless – met us without a smile.”