Few people today muck around in earth, and when on international flights, I often find I have the only decently dirty fingernails.

A great many film stars perched on unstable ravine edges in the canyon systems of Los Angeles will, like the cemeteries there, eventually slide down to join their unfortunate fellows in the canyon floors, with mud, cars, and embalmed or living film stars in one glorious muddy mass. We should not lend our talents to creating such spectacular catastrophes.

I gave one permaculture course in Botswana, and now my students are out in the bloody desert in Namibia teaching Bushmen - whose language nobody can speak - to be very good permaculture people.

We have to let nature put what's left together, and see what it can come up with to save our ass.

If you're dealing with an assembly of biological systems, you can bring the things together, but you can't connect them.

If you only do one thing, collect rainwater.

Trees are responsible for 3/4 of all rains