“Disassemble the cells of a sponge (by passing them through a sieve, for instance), then dump them into a solution, and they will find their way back together and build themselves into a sponge agai...”

“Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.”

“Three hundred types of mussel, a third of the worlds total, live in the Smokies. Smokies mussels have terrific names, like purple wartyback, shiny pigtoe, and monkeyface pearlymussel. Unfortunately...”

“I know a man who drives 600 yards to work. I know a woman who gets in her car to go a quarter of a mile to a college gymnasium to walk on a treadmill, then complains passionately about the difficul...”

“Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of gen...”

“If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. ...”

“Sometimes resilience arrives in the moment you discover your own unshakeable goodness.”

“When you plant a seed of love, it is you that blossoms.”

“All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.”

“As long as we lean on anything outside ourselves for support, we are going to be insecure. Most of us try to find support by leaning on all sorts of things - gold, books, learning, sensory stimulat...”

“We must not bind our hearts to the things of the world, no matter how beautiful they are or how much pleasure they give us. Our hearts must soar in the heavens for us to be truly the humans we were...”

“Losing something she loved had ripped her open in a way she had not expected. The pain hurt, but the pain was right. The Order had wrought a galaxy in which good capitulated to evil, where human fe...”

“To do the work of others is slavery. To do the work of God is true liberation.”

“The moment you, as a spiritual person, stop growing, you simply die. Your ministry will grow as a consequence of your dedication, faithfulness and persistent desire to move on”

“I would never want to reach out someday with a soft, uncallused hand-a hand never dirtied by serving-and shake the nail-pierced hand of Jesus.”