We are rag dolls made out of many ages and skins, changelings who have slept in wood nests, and hissed in the uncouth guise of waddling amphibians. We have played such roles for infinitely longer ages than we have been human. Our identity is a dream. We are process, not reality.

Tomorrow lurks in us, the latency to be all that was not achieved before.

Of all the unexpected qualities of an unexpected universe, the sheer organizing power of animal and plant metabolism is one of the most remarkable. . . . Where it reaches its highest development, in the human mind, we forget it completely. . . . So important does nature regard this unseen combustion . . . that a starving man's brain will be protected to the last while his body is steadily consumed.

God knows how many things a man misses by becoming smug and assuming that matters will take their own course.

It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man.

Like the herd animals we are, we sniff warily at the strange one among us.

Without the gift of flowers and the infinite diversity of their fruits, man and bird, if they had continued to exist at all, would be today unrecognizable.