Not much is known about alligators. They don't train well. And they're unwieldy and rowdy to work with in laboratories.

The brain is only three pounds of blood, dream, and electricity, and yet from that mortal stew come Beethoven's sonatas. Dizzie Gillespie's jazz. Audrey Hepburn's wish to spend the last month of her life in Somalia, saving children.

Much of life becomes background, but it is the province of art to throw buckets of light into the shadows and make life new again.

I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and deeply spiritual, glorifying the smallest life-form and embracing the most distant stars.

Our skin is what stands between us and the world.

In the early years of the Uprising, we survived on one meal a day of horse meat and soup, but by the end we ate only dried peas, dogs, cats and birds.

The more we exile ourselves from nature, the more we crave its miracle waters.