Sami Downing

“I’m caught between my desire to understand and my desire to appear as though I already understand.”
― Noor Naga, If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English

“Pick a single creature on this earth and its story will be the earth’s story,
he suddenly thinks. It can tell you everything, that one creature. The whole
history of the world, the whole likely future of the world.”
― Samantha Harvey, Orbital

“Our microbial relationships are about as intimate as any can be. Learning more about these associations changes our experience of our own bodies and the places we inhabit. “We” are ecosystems that span boundaries and transgress categories. Our selves emerge from a complex tangle of relationships only now becoming known.”
― Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

“We matter greatly and not at all. To reach some pinnacle of human achievement only to discover that your achievements are next to nothing and that to understand this is the greatest achievement of any life, which itself is nothing, and also much more than everything. Some metal separates us from the void; death is so close. Life is everywhere, everywhere.sm”
― Samantha Harvey, Orbital