Metaphor isn’t just decorative language. If it were, it wouldn’t scare us so much. . . . Colorful language threatens some people, who associate it, I think, with a kind of eroticism (playing with language...

As people flock to urban centers where ground space is limited, cities with green walls and roofs and skyscraper farms offer improved health and well-being, renewable resources, reliable food supply, and relief to the environment.

Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.

Frantic and serene, vigilant and calm, wrung-out and fortified, explosive and sedate—love commands a vast army of moods. Hoping for victory, limping from the latest skirmish, lovers enter the arena once again. Sitting still, we...

All relationships change the brain – but most important are the intimate bonds that foster or fail us, altering the delicate circuits that shape memories, emotions and that ultimate souvenir, the self.

Though not a natural world by any means, more like a collection of living dioramas, a zoo exists in its own time zone, somewhere between the seasonal sense of animals and our madly ticking watch...

Alligators have beautiful undulating skin, which feels dense, spongy, solid, like the best eraser.

I don’t want to be a passenger in my own life.

We try to exile ourselves more and more from nature – not always consciously: We build houses; we dismiss nature; nature has to be outside, because we’re inside. God forbid something like a cockroach comes...

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

As a species, we’ve somehow survived large and small ice ages, genetic bottlenecks, plagues, world wars and all manner of natural disasters, but I sometimes wonder if we’ll survive our own ingenuity.

I think if you look at any facet of nature in enough detail, you find it fascinating. How could you not? The universe is so full of marvels. Here’s an example — rain, the shape...

How can love’s spaciousnessbe conveyed in the narrowconfines of one syllable?

Just as our ancient ancestors drew animals on cave walls and carved animals from wood and bone, we decorate our homes with animal prints and motifs, give our children stuffed animals to clutch, cartoon animals...

Success produces success, just as money produces money.

Our mistakes are legion, but our talent is immeasurable.

I’ve always loved scuba diving and the cell-tickling feel of being underwater, though it poses unique frustrations. Alone, but with others, you may share the same sights and feelings, but you can’t communicate well.

I’ve always found it best to have a routine. I go to my study at the same time every day and climb into my bay window. I may not be inspired every day, but on...

When I set a glass prism on a windowsill and allow the sun to flood through it, a spectrum of colors dances on the floor. What we call “white” is a rainbow of colored rays...

Cicadas, buckling and unbuckling their stomach muscles, yield the sound of someone sharpening scissors. Fall field crickets, the thermometer hounds, add high-pitched tinkling chirps to the jazz, and their call quickens with warm weather, slows...

I believe consciousness is brazenly physical, a raucous mirage the brain creates to help us survive. But I also sense the universe is magical, greater than the sum of its parts, which I don’t attribute...

One morning as I closed the cyclone-fence gate / to begin a slow drift / down to the cookhouse on foot / (because my truck wheels were glued / in deep mud once again), /...

Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight.

The more we exile ourselves from nature, the more we crave its miracle waters.

Love is the great intangible. In our nightmares, we can create beasts out of pure emotion. Hate stalks the streets with dripping fangs, fear flies down narrow alleyways on leather wings, and jealousy spins sticky...

We’re dabbling in eugenics all the time, breeding ideal crops to replace less aesthetic or nutritious or hardy varieties; leveling forests to graze cattle or erect shopping malls and condos; planting groves of a few...

The further we distance ourselves from the spell of the present, explored by our senses, the harder it will be to understand and protect nature’s precarious balance, let alone the balance of our own human...

We tend to think of memories as monuments we once forged and may find intact beneath the weedy growth of years. But, in a real sense, memories are tied to and describe the present. Formed...

Complexity excites the mind, and order rewards it. In the garden, one finds both, including vanishingly small orders too complex to spot, and orders so vast the mind struggles to embrace them.

The faint pink coating the treetops promised rippling buds, a sure sign of spring hastening in, right on schedule, and the animal world getting ready for its fiesta of courting and mating, dueling and dancing,...

Invisible prose only!” rules out the sparkling style of [writers]. . . For [whom] vivid prose, and the visionary mind it evinces, rich with speculation, insight, and subjectivity, is the craft and offers a unique...

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.

Habitats keep evolving new pageants of species, and we shouldn’t interfere.

A miracle occurred, two hundred pure souls, condemned to death, did not weep. Not one of them ran away. None tried to hide. Like stricken swallows they clung to their teacher and mentor, to their...

I’m certainly not opposed to digital technology, whose graces I daily enjoy and rely on in so many ways. But I worry about our virtual blinders.

As the most social apes, we inhabit a mirror-world in which every important relationship, whether with spouse, friend or child, shapes the brain, which in turn shapes our relationships.

Still, though no one is an island, most are peninsulas. Our lives wouldn’t make sense without personal memories pinned like butterflies against the velvet backdrop of social history.

What a lonely species we are, searching for signals of life from other galaxies, adopting companion animals, visiting parks and zoos to commune with other beasts. In the process, we discover our shared identity.

Knee-deep in the cosmic overwhelm, I’m strickenby the ricochet wonder of it all: the plaineverythingness of everything, in cahootswith the everythingness of everything else.- From Diffraction (for Carl Sagan)

I’m an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it’s...

Hurricane season brings a humbling reminder that, despite our technologies, most of nature remains unpredictable.

I consider fiction a very high-class form of lying. I enjoy and admire it enormously, but I don’t think I’m very good at it.

It began in mystery and it will end in mystery, but what a rare and beautiful country lies in between.

Because we can’t escape our ancient hunger to live close to nature, we encircle the house with lawns and gardens, install picture windows, adopt pets and Boston ferns, and scent everything that touches our lives.

As fleeting emotions stalk it, a face can leak fear or the guilt of a forming lie.

Much more. We’re joined at the heart.””Bad luck for you, I’m afraid. My ticker’s pretty wonky.””Too much boozing.”His eyes twinkled, and he drew me close. “Not enough kissling.

Brain scans show synchrony between the brains of mother and child; but what they can’t show is the internal bond that belongs to neither alone, a fusion in which the self feels so permeable it...

So much in a relationship changes when a partner is seriously ill, helpless yet blameless, and indefatigably needy. I felt old. [p. 99] The animal part of him in pain accepted my caring. But the...

For me, life offers so many complexly appealing moments that two beautiful objects may be equally beautiful for different reasons and at different times. How can one choose?

We tend to think of heroes only in terms of violent combat, whether it’s against enemies or a natural disaster. But human beings also perform radical acts of compassion; we just don’t talk about them,...