habit, a particularly insidious thug who chokes passion and smothers love. Habit puts us on autopilot.

Couples are jigsaw puzzles that hang together by touching in just enough points. They're never total fits or misfits. In time, a pair invents its own commonwealth, complete with anthems, rituals, and lingos-a cult of two with fallible gods.

Knee-deep in the cosmic overwhelm, I’m stricken by the ricochet wonder of it all: the plain everythingness of everything, in cahoots with the everythingness of everything else.

Habitats keep evolving new pageants of species, and we shouldn't interfere.

My mother always said I must be part Mongolian because of my lotus-pale complexion and squid-ink black hair.

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

It's animal by animal that you save a species.