Robin Wall Kimmerer

What's good for the land is also good for the people.

Plants tell their stories not by what they say, but by what they do.

The teachings tell us that a harvest is made honorable by what you give in return for what you take.

If citizenship is a matter of shared beliefs, then I believe in the democracy of species. If citizenship means an oath of loyalty to a leader, then I choose the leader of the trees. If good citizens agree to uphold the laws of the nation, then I choose natural law, the law of reciprocity, of regeneration, of mutual flourishing.

It is an honor to be the guardian of another species—an honor within each person's reach that we too often forget.

I knew it with a certainty as warm and clear as the September sunshine. The land loves us back. She loves us with beans and tomatoes, with roasting ears and blackberries and birdsongs. By a shower of gifts and a heavy rain of lessons. She provides for us and teaches us to provide for ourselves. That's what good mothers do.

Sustainable harvesting can be the way we treat a plant with respect, by respectfully receiving its gift.

Reciprocity is a matter of keeping the gift in motion through self-perpetuating cycles of giving and receiving.

Names are the way we humans build relationship, not only with each other but with the living world.

A garden is a nursery for nurturing connection, the soil for cultivation of practical reverence. And its power goes far beyond the garden gate—once you develop a relationship with a little patch of earth, it becomes a seed itself.

A theory, to scientists, means something rather different from its popular use, which suggests something speculative or untested. A scientific theory is a cohesive body of knowledge, an explanation that is consistent among a range of cases and can allow you to predict what might happen in unknown situations.

The ultimate reciprocity, loving and being loved in return.