I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating, too. I am not washed and beautiful in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections, but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down.

- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek