The first man and woman knew it all; they had “pure and uncorrupted natural knowledge,” before they tasted the forbidden fruit and were thrown out of Paradise. Adam and Eve enjoyed not only perfect knowledge but perfect power; and there was no death in the world. Once we recover what our First Parents knew, we will conquer death again.

Cactus finches do more with cactus than Plains Indians did with buffalo. They nest in cactus; they sleep in cactus; they often copulate in cactus; they drink cactus nectar; they eat cactus flowers, cactus pollen, and cactus seeds. In return they pollinate the cactus, like bees.

As an instrument of planetary home repair, it is hard to imagine anything as safe as a tree.

To know your organism, you must eat it.’ Not just the flies: the pupae. And not just to horrify people, but to know.

Peter suspects that the caltrop is evolving in response to the finches. Where the struggle for existence is fierce, the caltrop that is likeliest to succeed is the plant that puts more energy into spines and less into seeds; but in the safer, more secluded spot, the fittest plants are the ones that put more energy into making seeds and less energy into protecting them. The finches may be driving the evolution of caltrop while caltrop is driving the evolution of the finches.

Darwin argues, essentially, that all the sophistications we see in the eagle’s or the human’s eye could have arisen gradually, by stages, across geological spans of time, each stage conferring somewhat clearer vision than the one before.

The lucky individual that finds a different seed, or nook, or niche, will fly up and out from beneath the Sisyphean rock of competition. It will tend to flourish and so will its descendants – that is, those that inherit the lucky character that had set it a little apart. Individuals that diverge from the madding crowd will tend to prosper, while the rest will be ground down.

Some men by unalterable frame of their constitution are stout, others timorous, some confident, others modest and tractable.

It’s almost as if each instant is our last and first. We are always dying, and always reborn. And that is living.

It's almost as if each instant is our last and first. We are always dying, and always reborn. And that is living.