Ian Craighead

“What is it that drew us to the hollow tonight? What crazy kind of species is it that leaves a warm home on a rainy night to ferry salamanders across a road? It's tempting to call it altruism, but it's not. There is nothing selfless about it. This night heaps rewards on the givers as well as the recipients. We get to be there, to witness this amazing rite, and, for an evening, to enter into relationship with other beings, as different from ourselves as we can imagine.
It has been said that people of the modern world suffer a great sadness, a "species loneliness" - estrangement from the rest of Creation. We have built this isolation with our fear, with our arrogance, and with our homes brightly lit against the night. For a moment as we walked this road, those barriers dissolved and we began to relieve the loneliness and know each other once again.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself. With him, she was at ease; her skin felt as though it was her right size.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“In the stories after the war, all the resistance heroes were dashing, sinewy types who could construct machine guns from paperclips. And the Germans either raised their godlike blond heads through open tank hatches to watch broken cities scroll past, or else were psychopathic, sex-crazed torturers of beautiful Jewesses. Where did the boy fit in? He made such a faint presence. It was like being in the room with a feather. But his soul glowed with some fundamental kindness, didn’t it?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See