“Prison for the crime of puberty -- that was how secondary school had seemed.”

“The species greatest harvest words.”

“Alex felt the words wash over him. He had the strange fantasy the things were seeking places within him to lay their young.”

“Self-awareness is probably overrated. A complex, self-regulating system doesn't need it in order to be successful, or even smart.”

“I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.”

“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wi...”

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its ...”

“We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary ass...”

“I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodat...”

“We risk losing what nature is if we couch its value in human terms.”