Curtis Nash

“Bark is a waterproof skin of dead cells that protects a tree's interior plumbing. The furrows in bark are essentially stretch marks that appear as the tree expands. On some trees, like the giant sequoia, bark can be 12 or more inches thick--good insulation from wildfire. Other species, like birch and aspen, have skins just 1/4 inch thick. In the famously exquisite bark of paper birch, cells are laminated on top of one another in layers, so the bark can stretch without furrowing. Microscopic air spaces riddle the outer layers, reflecting light in all directions and making the bark appear white. Should the inner, re4ddish brown bark be exposed, a black scar develops.”
― James Balog

“In the end we are all caught in devices of our own making. I believe that. In the end we are all caught.”
― Stephen King, 1922

“There's an invisible Tokyo built of them, existing in the minds of us, its citizens. Internet, manga, Hollywood, doomsday cults, they are all places where you go and where you matter as an individual. Some people will tell you about their places straight off, and won't shut up about it all night. Others keep it hidden like a garden in a mountain forest.
People with no places are those who end up throwing themselves onto the tracks.”
― David Mitchell, Ghostwritten

“The tree of life shows at a glance the antiquity and the kinship of all living organisms and how there is "descent with modification" (as Darwin originally called evolution) at every juncture. It shows too that evolution never stops, never repeats itself, never goes backwards. It shows the irrevocability of extinction--if a branch is cut off, a particular evolutionary path is lost forever.”
― Oliver Sacks, The River of Consciousness