There are good mothers and bad ones, but most of them are somewhere in-between.

It's not a pretty picture, but there are reasons for hope.

If everybody on the planet today had the same standard of living as the average European or American, we would need three new planets. But we don't even have one new planet. We have this one, and with the way we're polluting it, the shrinking water resources, the climate change, the experimentation with plants... the outlook is grim.

At some point, my body will collapse. But I hope that my brain will still be working so that I can carry on with writing.

A book came out recently written by scientists and environmentalists that made me so angry. It said the only thing we have to worry about is big industry. Each individual who tries to make his or her own environment better is useless. I find this criminal, because then you have a billion people all saying, It doesn't matter what I do because I'm just one person. But if you turn that around and a billion people say, What I do does make a difference, then it will make a difference.

If plants could be credited with reasoning powers, we would marvel at the imaginative ways they bribe or ensnare other creatures to carry out their wishes.

We, as humans, have actually developed a sense of social responsibility. We have gone beyond our basic instincts.