“There is a terribly terrestrial mindset about what we need to do to take care of the planet.”

A lumberman will look at a forest and see so many board feet of lumber. I see a living city.

I have lots of heroes: anyone and everyone who does whatever they can to leave the natural world better than they found it.

I have heard endlessly that fish are so resilient that there is no way that you could exterminate a species. We are learning otherwise.

Our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels and the corporate mandate to maximize shareholder value encourages drilling without taking into account the costs to the ocean, even without major spills.

Look at the bark of a redwood, and you see moss.

We did not want, from garbage and nuclear wastes to sludge from sewage to entire ships that had reached the end of their useful life.

My mother was known as the ‘bird lady’ of the neighborhood.

Since the middle of the 20th century, more has been learnt about the ocean than during all preceding human history; at the same time, more has been lost.

Photosynthetic organisms in the sea yield most of the oxygen in the atmosphere, take up and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide, shape planetary chemistry, and hold the planet steady.

All through college, I had frequently been the only girl in a science class – which wasn’t such a bad deal.

They are so beautiful, a pair is in the Museum of Modern Art. The set I have are ruby red. I call them my ruby flippers.

Every fish fertilizes the water in a way that generates the plankton that ultimately leads back into the food chain, but also yields oxygen, grabs carbon – it’s a part of what makes the ocean function and what makes the planet function.

Every time I slip into the ocean, it’s like going home.

As if the ocean somehow doesn’t matter or is so big, so vast that it can take care of itself, or that there is nothing that we could possibly do that we could harm the ocean.

With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you’re connected to the sea.

I personally have stopped eating seafood.

Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! what worthy man does not keep those in mind?

There is no other subject on which the average mind is so much confused as the subject of tolerance and intolerance… Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to principles. Intolerance applies only to principles, but never to persons.

The mind defines, decides, doubts and divides – only the heart truly binds.

She asked for my love and I gave her a dangerous mind.

It would be positively boring if minds were in tune.

Worship is not an experience. Worship is an act, and this takes discipline. We are to worship ”in spirit and in truth.” Never mind about the feelings. We are to worship in spite of them.

Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.

Those with a grateful mindset tend to see the message in the mess. And even though life may knock them down, the grateful find reasons, if even small ones, to get up.