Annie Dillard Quotes

I love insects. They are amazing.

Insects are what neurosis would sound like, if neurosis could make a noise with its nose.

An insect is more complex than a star..and is a far greater challenge to understand.

Even without seeing the crickets, grasshoppers, cicadas and katydids, we hear them shrilling in this season and trust that they're the tiny living gargoyles entomologists claim.

Of all bugs, growing up I just loved the pill bugs. They roll up, you play with them, you wait for them to open up, and then when you touch them they roll up again. I just love that.

I really liked insects - all kinds: flies, grasshoppers, weevils.

My kid really loves bugs.

I can pretty much name and rattle off the genus and species of all the bugs you see in everyday life.

I love all kinds of insects, and I've heard Australia has some really interesting bugs.

Ninety-nine percent of all species that ever lived are now extinct.

And books which told me everything about the wasp, except why.

The tenacity of life is mind-boggling. We keep finding it where no one thought it could be.

When I was little, I would burn ants with a magnifying glass. But now that I'm older, I'm more of a cat guy.

On the day they dropped the bomb Frank had a tablespoon and a Mason jar. What he was doing was spooning different kinds of bugs into the jar and making them fight....I can remember other bug fights we staged later on...They won't fight unless you keep shaking the jar.

Strange that creatures without backbones have the hardest shells.

I still try to keep my eyes open. I'm always on the lookout for antlion traps in sandy soil, monarch pupae near milkweed, skipper larvae in locust leaves. These things are utterly common, and I've not seen one

The dragon-fly is dancing, - Is on the water glancing, She flits about with nimble wing, The flickering, fluttering, restless thing. Besotted chafers all admire Her light-blue, gauze-like, neat attire; They laud her blue complexion, And think her shape perfection.

Obviously technologies that are sustainable are a logical first step to creating a just society, one that doesn't trample life in all its forms, whether it's other humans or other life forms on the earth, one that acknowledges that we're all sharing the space and that there needs to be room for every living thing somewhere.

Think of me as the praying mantis of the supernatural world. Aren't those the bugs that bite the heads off the males? Link looked skeptical. Yes. Then they eat them

The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.

Artificial selection turned the wolf into the shepherd, and the wild grasses into wheat and corn. In fact, almost every plant and animal that we eat today was bred from a wild, less edible ancestor. If artificial selection can work such profound changes in only ten or fifteen thousand years, what can natural selection do operating over billions of years? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of life.

An errant May-fly swerved unsteadily athwart the current in the intoxicated fashion affected by young bloods of May-flies seeing life. A swirl of water and a 'cloop!' and the May-fly was visible no more

A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.

Any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle.