Children and Other Wild Animals Quotes

“it’s also appealing to think that maybe sturgeon have a devious sense of humor, and they like to goof on salmon, and every once in a while a sturgeon will streak to the surface and explode aloft, saying to his posse, hey look, I’m a chinook! and all the sturgeon snigger rudely as the salmon glare and continue their commute, trying to maintain a silvery dignity, while ignoring the catcalls, so to speak, of the sturgeon, who then go back to eating cats. It could be.”
― Brian Doyle, Children and Other Wild Animals: Notes on badgers, otters, sons, hawks, daughters, dogs, bears, air, bobcats, fishers, mascots, Charles Darwin, newts, ... tigers and various other zoological matters

“Question: what weighs five quadrillion tons but you cannot see hide nor hair nor hint of it? Answers: Guilt, responsibility, fatherhood, sorrow, love, history—but here I mean that most crucial of freighted invisibilities, air, the atmosphere, our atmosphere, the incredible blanket we breathe, without which our sphere is only another among zillions of lifeless rocks let loose in the endless void. Five quadrillion tons! The parade of zeroes like a circus train behind the engine of the five: 5,000,000,000,000,000 …”
― Brian Doyle, Children and Other Wild Animals