• "Whales and redwoods both make us feel small and I think that's an important experience for humans to have at the hands of nature. We need to recognize that we are not the stars of the show. We're just another pretty face, just one species among millions more."
    — Roger Payne in Talking on the Water
  • "Whales live enigmatic lives, in that realm impenetrable to our gaze. Small wonder they've seemed magical and strange. Until recently, we couldn't even enter their world long enough to see them completely. And scientists still aren't able to travel with them sufficiently to learn of their wanderings and relationships. . . . In rare privileged moments, we enter their world, and then only briefly and shallowly, to watch through the murk or to eavesdrop."
    — Diane Ackerman in an interview about The Moon by Whale Light
  • "What if the catalyst or the key to understanding creation lay somewhere in the immense mind of the whale? . . . Suppose if God came back from wherever it is he's been and asked us smilingly if we'd figured it out yet. Suppose he wanted to know if it had finally occurred to us to ask the whale. And then he sort of looked around and he said, 'By the way, where are the whales?' "
    — Cormac McCarthy in Of Whales and Men

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