Ruby Grace

“Trying to understand the life of another being or another ecosystem so unlike our own is often humbling and, for many scientists, is a deeply spiritual pursuit.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Democracy of Species

“The arrogance of English is that the only way to be animate, to be worthy of respect and moral concern, is to be human.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Democracy of Species

“I remember the words of Bill Tall Bull, a Cheyenne elder. As a young person, I spoke to him with a heavy heart, lamenting that I had no native language with which to speak to the plants and the places that I love. 'They love to hear the old language,' he said, 'it's true.' 'But,' he said, with fingers on his lips, 'You don't have to speak it here.' 'If you speak it hear,' he said, patting his chest, 'They will hear you.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Democracy of Species

“What I saw that night was a world so rich and complex I was disorientated, a world complete unto itself, a world of smooth surfaces broken occasionally by a flash of eccentricity so deep that it numbed any attempt at interpretation.”
― Joan Didion, South and West: From a Notebook