The fewer species there are and the fewer species we know about, the fewer questions we even know to ask.

We are all of us walking communities of bacteria. The world shimmers, a pointillist landscape made of tiny living beings.

Life on earth is more like a verb. It repairs, maintains, re-creates, and outdoes itself.

All I ask is that we compare human consciousness with spirochete ecology.

All living beings, not just animals, but plants and microorganisms, perceive. To survive, an organic being must perceive - it must seek, or at least recognize, food and avoid environmental danger.

Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn't create.

Everybody knows what a caterpillar is, and it doesn't look anything like a butterfly.

Life learned early on to recognize itself.

Evolution is no linear family tree, but change in the single multidimensional being that has grown to cover the entire surface of Earth.

I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change - led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence.

People say I am against Darwin. That is ridiculous.

But they love each other. Isn't that what love means? That you're supposed to be there for the other person to turn to, no matter what?

Manners matter, asserts the professor. What provokes rebellion, he asserts, is not as often a theory out allowing for arbitrary power but be excessive, brusque use of it by a particular individual.

The ideal beauty is a fugitive which is never found.

So I've been pushed farther and farther out into the mountains, but at the same time realizing that that experience is really nice and I'm glad I'm getting pushed out there farther.

Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot wait.

If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you

It is not right to glory in the slain

We should give the Lord the excellence He deserves in everything we do.

Who cares about pretty? I'm going for noticeable.

In the fourth grade, I learned how to fake walking into a door. You know, you hit it with your hand and snap your head back. The girls loved it.