"Many people learn how to talk, but they don't learn how to listen. Listening to one another is an important thing in life. And music tells us how to do that."
Quotations
"Love as a concrete foundation for an authentically functional civilization requires the around-the-clock labors of forgiveness. Without it, love fails, friendship fails, intelligence fails, humanity fails."
"A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically."
"Gardeners may create order briefly out of chaos, but nature always gets the last word, and what it says is usually untidy by human standards. But I find all states of nature beautiful, and because I want to delight in my garden, not rule it, I just accept my yen to tame the chaos on one day and let the Japanese beetles run riot on the next."
"We ogle plants and animals up close on television, the Internet and in the movies. We may not worship the animals we see, but we still regard them as necessary physical and spiritual companions. Technological nature can't completely satisfy that yearning."
"Even without seeing the crickets, grasshoppers, cicadas and katydids, we hear them shrilling in this season and trust that they're the tiny living gargoyles entomologists claim."
"I'm fascinated how often and with what whole-heartedness people will risk their lives to perform acts of courage, sacrifice, and compassion for total strangers."
"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 to watch, animal stories to read."
"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, or we don't talk about them as much."
"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."