# Quote — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

> It is a terrible punishment to be banished from the web of reciprocity, with no one to share with you and no one for you to care for. I remember walking a street in Manhattan, where the warm light of a lavish home spilled out over the sidewalk on a man picking through the garbage for his dinner. Maybe we've all been banished to lonely corners by our obsession with private property. We've accepted banishment even from ourselves when we spend our beautiful, utterly singular lives on making more money, to buy more things that feed but never satisfy.

- Author: [Robin Wall Kimmerer](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer.md)
- Book: [Braiding Sweetgrass](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer/braiding-sweetgrass.md)
- Page: 307
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robin_Wall_Kimmerer#Braiding_Sweetgrass_(2013)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer/braiding-sweetgrass/it-is-a-terrible

## More from this book

> The world is more than your thoughtless commute. We, the collateral, are your wealth, your teachers, your security, your family. Your strange hunger for ease should not mean a death sentence for the rest of Creation.

p. 359 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer/braiding-sweetgrass/the-world-is-more.md)

> It has been said that people of the modern world suffer a great sadness, a "species loneliness"—estrangement from the rest of Creation. We have built this isolation with our fear, with our arrogance, and with our homes brightly lit against the night.

p. 358 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer/braiding-sweetgrass/it-has-been.md)

> Naturalists live in a world of wounds that only they can see.

p. 357 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robin-wall-kimmerer/braiding-sweetgrass/naturalists-live-in-a-world.md)