"You are God. You want to make a forest, something to hold the soil, lock up solar energy, and give off oxygen. Wouldn’t it be simpler just to rough in a slab of chemicals, a green acre of goo? . . . You are a starling. I’ve seen you fly through a longleaf pine without missing a beat . . . You are a chloroplast moving in water heaved one hundred feet above ground. Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen in a ring around magnesium . . . You are evolution; you have only begun to make trees. You are God–are you tired? finished?"
-ANNIE DILLARD