How To Be A Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals

by Sy Montgomery

These two animals carried within them the wild heart that beats inside all creatures—the wildness we honor in our breath and our blood, that wildness that keeps us on this spinning planet. Here in the cloud forest, I found again the wildness that keeps us sane and whole, the wild, delicious hunger for life.

“Love is not changed by death,” read the quote by British poet Edith Sitwell, “and nothing is lost, and in the end, all is harvest.”

This is the gift great souls leave us when they die. They enlarge our hearts. They leave us a greater capacity for love.

A far worse mistake than misreading an animal’s emotions is to assume the animal hasn’t any emotions at all.

Thales of Miletus, a Greek philosopher who lived more than 2,600 years ago. “The universe,” he’s reported to have said, “is alive, and has fire in it, and is full of gods.”

our world, and the worlds around and within it, is aflame with shades of brilliance we cannot fathom—and is far more vibrant, far more holy, than we could ever imagine.