“Whether people need nature or not, it was clear that nature needed people. But perhaps nature needs us like a hostage needs her captors: nature needs us not to annihilate her, not to run her over, ...”

“Even in rainier areas, where dust is less inexorable and submits to brooms and rags, it is generally detested, because dust is not organized and is therefore considered aesthetically bankrupt. Our ...”

“The world, full of past sound, would be like the sky, full of past light. The world would be like the mind, for which there is no once.”

“Our inventions have long been ahead of us in terms of efficiency and sanity, productivity and predictability. Oh, how weve wished we could be manmade, too. What has been keeping us back, keeping us...”

“Why should conversation always be so much more coherent than experience?”

“Plants cannot stay safe. Desire for light spools grass out of the ground; desire for a visitor spools red ruffles out of twigs. Desire makes plants very brave, so they can find what they desire; an...”

“Okay, try this on for size, Tall, Dark and Handsome. I won't be born for almost seven hundred hundred years. How's that strike you?”

“He met me at the airport; it was ten in the morning, Washington time, when I arrived, after having taken a plane that left Los Angeles International at 10:10 A.M. Los Angeles time. Who says time-re...”

“You're from the future, Mr Netherton?""Not exactly," he said. "I'm in the future that would result from my not being here. But since I am, it isn't your future. Here.”