I'm not an activist by nature. I am suspicious of Utopian thinking and equally suspicious of its alternate.

Canadians and Americans may look alike, but the contents of their heads are quite different. Americans experience themselves, individually, as small toads in the biggest and most powerful puddle in the world. Their sense of power comes from identifying with the puddle. Canadians as individuals may have more power within the puddle, since there are fewer toads in it; it's the puddle that's seen as powerless.

I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.

A wave of blood goes up to my head, my stomach shrinks together, as if something dangerous has just missed hitting me. It's as if I've been caught stealing, or telling a lie; or as if I've heard other people talking about me, saying bad things about me, behind my back. There's the same flush of shame, of guilt and terror, and of cold disgust with myself. But I don't know where these feelings have come from, what I've done.

Don't eat anything you aren't prepared to kill. Don't kill anything you aren't prepared to eat.

We thought we were running away from the grownups, and now we are the grownups.

The use of "religion" as an excuse to repress the freedom of expression and to deny human rights is not confined to any country or time.