Walking the dark rainforest

"Memory supplies some ecological detail, and imagination adds a few beasts of its own."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

The rewards of optimism

"But the unsatisfactory thing about despair, in my view, is that besides being fruitless it's far less exciting than hope, however slim."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

Found in translation

"The mental solitude that comes with my total incomprehension of table talk compensates some for the lack of physical solitude."
- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

Lost, and profound

"As we extinguish a large portion of the planet's biological diversity, we will lose also a large portion of out world's beauty, complexity, intellectual interest, spiritual depth, and ecological health."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

Crunch those numbers...but with caution

"Modeling is fun, sometimes it produces elegant structures, but there is a tendency to reify models. To take them as nature, when really all they are is proposed abstractions of nature. I'm concerned when a literature begins to develop on the models themselves, rather than on nature."

- Dan Simberloff, quoted in David Quammen's Song of the Dodo

Do take note...

"Memory knows things that notes could never remember."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

The 'stamp' of civilization

"All over the planet, humanity is at war against other species, against the wildness of wild landscape, against the redness of nature's tooth and claw. Humanity will win. The only point at issue is the final severity of the peace."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

No-return of the native

"Dreamy invocation of conciliatory measures was popular among the British colonists. "Conciliation" would become the standard euphemism covering a multitude of oppressions. What it meant was, We take your land, we give you out religion and our language and our diseases, and then you and your culture melt away like snow on a griddle."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

Shadows of limelight

"For every neat legend told and retold, a bit of messy but significant reality is ignored…Furthermore, while some legends have their uses, they all have their costs."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

Havoc of exotic invasives

"Biologists would have to destroy a place in order to save it and that didn't even work in Vietnam."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

Conviction vs proof

"Faith comforts, but data persuade."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

Swing mood

"Like good resolutions, frustrations and despair soon fade, at least in a certain kind of person."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

Animals are 'people' too

"We all recognize that Homo sapiens encompasses variation among individuals, but it is easy to forget that…other species routinely encompass variation too."

- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo

The National Geographic effect

"Anyone who has ever stepped into a rainforest, head full of images from glossy nature photography, has had…disappointment, which derives from confusing diversity with abundance."
- David Quammen in Song of the Dodo