As a biologist, I can't think of myself as anything but an animal among animals and plant.

No kind of bomb ever built will extinguish hatred.

We must surely appear to the world as exactly what we are: a nation that organizes its economy around consuming twice as much oil as it produces, and around the profligate wastefulness of the wars and campaigns required to defend such consumption. In recent years we have defined our national interest largely in terms of the oil fields and pipelines we need to procure fuel.

God is frightful, God is great--you pick. I choose this: God is in the details, the completely unnecessary miracles sometimes tossed up as stars to guide us. They are the promise of good fortune in a cloudless day, and the animals in the clouds; look hard enough, and you'll see them. Don't ask if they're real.

It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn't.

The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.

Mother could go for one year without food, but not one day without her lip sticks.