I believe that the greatest truths of the universe don't lie outside, in the study of the stars and the planets. They lie deep within us, in the magnificence of our heart, mind, and soul. Until we understand what is within, we can't understand what i...
What is your personal carrying capacity for grief, rage, despair? We are living in a period of mass extinction. The numbers stand at 200 species a day. That's 73,000 a year. This culture is oblivious to their passing, feels entitled to their every la...
The dominant culture eats entire biomes. No, that is too generous, because eating implies a natural biological relationship. This culture doesn't just consume ecosystems, it obliterates them, it murders them, one after another. This culture is an eco...
This is the moment when we have to decide: does a world exist outside ourselves and is that world worth fighting for? Another 200 species went extinct today. They were my kin. They were yours, too. If we know them as such, why aren't we fighting to s...
Rose wasn't 'ordinary'. What was I supposed to do? Wrap her in cotton wool? Tell her 'Here, I could give you the universe, but I'm not going to in case you get hurt? There's all this stuff out there, all these planets, all these wonders, but I want y...
Astronomy defined our home as a small planet tucked away in one corner of an average galaxy among million; biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God; geology gave us the immensity of time and taught us how little of it our ...
This sadness is one of the great trials of the human experiment. As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet who have been given the gift - or curse, perhaps - of awareness about our own mortality. Everything here eventually dies; we're ...
If Jupiter was in the ascendant when you were born, you are of a jovial disposition; and if you're not jovial but miserable and saturnine that's a disaster, because a disaster is a dis-astro, or misplaced planet. Disaster is Latin for ill-starred. Th...
There is enough conformity in the world Lord MacCaulay. I doubt that mine, or lack of it, will send the planet from its axis. Meanwhile, my heart does not soar for the riches you set before me. Perhaps one day, I may feel differently. For now, I wish...
Pretending that the world’s religions are the same does not make our world safer. Like all forms of ignorance, it makes our world more dangerous. What we need on this furiously religious planet is a realistic view of where religious rivals clash an...
People know your tragedies and they treat you like you’re not human. Like you’re a three-headed goat. A monster from some other planet. They keep reminding you of your pain. You see how they look at me? They’re stuck on that person I used to be...
My purpose is to change the fact that you’re just food. If you learn the lessons well you will be able to have a happy long life. A lot of us believe that the human being deserves the opportunity and the privilege to coexist with us. That’s why w...
On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the planet's history; and as there had been a beginning of life upon it, so, under the influence of other conditio...
Because this woman sobbed in the way that all women sob, whether they do it outwardly or whether they keep it silently locked up inside themselves. They sob because they realise, one day, that they were born on a planet of men, and that short of deat...
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green pla...
She'd been a good nurse, and now she'd never be a nurse again. She was bitter about it and had turned herself into the slut bride from Planet X, as if even in human form, she wanted people to know what she was now: different, other. Trouble was, she ...
I wasn't lonely. Loneliness, I think, has very little to do with location. It's a state of mind. In the centre of every city are some of the loneliest people in the world. If anything, because our whole planet was just outside the window, I felt even...
And now, I needed the stars. Not the explosive ones that hurled out tongues of gas and, along with gravity, hammered out the planets. I needed the comforting ones that twinkled like a childhood song, that spun about my head, my head alone as I watche...
In a sense, the Earth is mounting an immune response against the human species. It is beginning to react to the human parasite, the flooding infection of people, the dead spots of the concrete all over the planet, the cancerous rot-outs in Europe, Ja...
I had a dream about you. I was a chef and you were a buffet. The people were starving, children were dying of malnutrition, and all the politicians tried feeding them rhetoric. I suggested we save the planet, and you agreed, at least until you realiz...
Right, then.” He pointed across to a bank of phones against the wall. “If you want to check your voice mail, now’s the time.” “Where’s my phone?” “Out of service.” “It was fine in the car.” “It’s not fine now.” “What’d...
