The extinction rate is so huge now, we're to the stage where we've got to set up recombinant ecologies. There are no longer enough species left, anywhere, to hold the system together.

Permaculture is something with a million heads. It's a way of thinking which is already loose, and you can't put a way of thinking back in the box.

"Should we tamper with nature?" is no longer a question - we've tampered with nature on the whole face of the Earth.

The worst thing about permaculture is that it's extremely successful, but it has no center, and no hierarchy.

We ourselves are part of a guild of species that lie within and without our bodies. Aboriginal peoples and the Ayurvedic practitioners of ancient India have names for such guilds, or beings made up (as we are) of two or more species forming one organism. Most of nature is composed of groups of species working interdependently.

We're only truly secure when we can look out our kitchen window and see our food growing and our friends working nearby.

At least half of every city is wrong. From latitude 30 degrees to latitude 60, say, you've got to have the long axis of the house facing the sun. If the land is cut up into squares, that makes half of all houses wrong if they face the road. Even houses way in the country, and way off the road, face the bloody road. And from there, you just go wronger all the way.