Sheila

“A metaphor for this, and also a fact, which is lovely and also terrible in this case, is the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, which I got to visit recently. It’s about three miles wide and runs from one end of the peninsula to the other, and it’s the most demilitarized piece of real estate on the earth. There are, as you know, eight species of Asian cranes. All of them are either endangered or nearly endangered, and two of them are making a comeback because they do their winter foraging in the demilitarized zone, which has been made into an unintentional national park. And if North and South Korea ever settle their problems and remove the last nuclear trip wire of the Cold War, that land will probably be developed, and those two species, which are ten million years old, will be gone from the earth.”
― Edward O. Wilson, The Poetic Species: A Conversation with Edward O. Wilson and Robert Hass

“He steepled his fingers in monkish solemnity. "You cannot hide from Fate, my son." Sarah grunted. "People don't have fates." "No: fates have people," Jet said, suddenly serious.”
― Sean Stewart, Resurrection Man

“The ecosystem itself is not just a landscape full of plant and animal species; it’s an intricate network of relationships, including those between predators and their prey, between flowering plants and their pollinators, between fruiting plants and the animals that disperse their seeds. Each such relationship constitutes a link between trophic levels.”
― David Quammen, The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions

“That's not gon fu." We stared at each other for a long time, then he raised on eybrow. "I could fix it, if you wanted." I must have nodded, because then he asked me if I could chi ku, eat bitter, the Chinese expression meaning to endure suffering. Lying, I said yes. Then he asked me if I was afraid of pain. Lying again, I said no. "You want?" he asked. "I want,
" I said, and became his student.”
― Mark Salzman, Iron & Silk