How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph) or (Feed Chatter #.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Link was going, What the hell's she wearing?, and I was going, Wool. It's wool. Like from an animal. (4.6)
We'll be the first to admit that we wouldn't be able to tell ermine from samite from qiviut (the apparently downy wool of a musk ox, which probably doesn't smell very good). Wool, however, is still an everyday sort of material around here. The fact that Link has no clue what Violet's wearing indicates the separation between people and the natural world that is continually at issue in this novel.
Quote #2
She took me up to a huge window. We stood in front of it. Outside the window, there had been a garden, like, I guess you could call it a courtyard or terrarium? But a long time ago the glass ceiling over the terrarium had cracked, and so everything was dead, and there was moon dust all over everything out there. Everything was gray.
Also, something was leaking air and heat out in the garden, lots of waste air, and the air was rocketing off into space through the hole, so all of the dead vines in the garden were standing straight up, slapping back and forth, pulled toward the crack in the ceiling where we could see the stars. (15.5-6)
This haunting image of the cracked terrarium in the moon garden, and the plants whipping around from the leaking air (what a waste!) is a symbol for what Earth could become without some major course correction. Unfortunately, we don't see any signs of a redirect down on Earth.
Quote #3
There were some weather blimps in front of us. They were all yellow in the sunset that was spreading over the CloudsTM. (18.29)
Things are so bad, environmentally speaking, that the clouds aren't even real. Fake, trademarked clouds are all people see. (Although we have to wonder: who's making money off these clouds?)
Quote #4
I remember seeing the hawks perched on street lamps, during those last days of the American forests. They had come from the mountains, maybe, or pine woods that were now two or three levels of suburb, but the hawks sat in our cities like kings. They would not look down from their lampposts as thousands of downcars went by underneath. It was like they sat alone on their Douglas firs. (QuiverChatter4.3)
Here, we get a retrospective interview from an oldster on a show called "Amurica: A Portrait in Geezers." He's talking about what it was like when the forests were destroyed. Nature is turned topsy-turvy, and the animals are so confused with their destroyed habitats that they flock to the cities. A few things to notice here: (1) this old guy knows how to use language. (We're guessing he didn't go to School™.) (2) Unlike the degraded humans, the animals manage to retain a sense of nobility, like the hawk that won't look down his nose (okay, beak) at the puny humans skittering along in their "downcars."
Quote #5
"So, we went into the conceptionarium, and told the geneticists what we wanted, and your father went in one room, and I went in the other and..." (25.68)
Here, Titus's mom explains the special moment that they… picked Titus out of a catalog. See, people can't have children "freestyle" anymore, because there's so much radiation in the atmosphere. Well, at least this makes the "birds and the bees" talk a little less embarrassing.
Quote #6
"Jefferson Park? Yeah. That was knocked down to make an air factory."
"You're kidding!" said Violet.
"Yeah, that's what happened," said Dad, shrugging. "You got to have air."
Violet pointed out, "Trees make air," which kind of worried me because I knew Dad would think it was snotty.
My father stared at her for a long time. Then he said, "Yeah. Sure. Do you know how inefficient trees are, next to an air factory?"
"But we need trees!"
"For what?" he said. "I mean, they're nice, and it's too bad, but like... Do you know how much real estate costs?"(27.10-16)
They paved paradise to put up an air factory. Never mind the ironic fact that trees are air factories—plus, they're nice to look at, too. All that matters is real estate—and efficiency.
Quote #7
It smelled like the country. It was a filet mignon farm, all of it, and the tissue spread for miles around the paths where we were walking. It was like these huge hedges of red all around us, with these beautiful marble patterns running through them. They had these tubes, they were bringing the tissue blood, and we could see the blood running around, up and down. It was really interesting. I like to see how things are made, and to understand where they come from. (29.11)
Talk about factory farming. The point here is that these people have no real connection to nature anymore, not even with their food. They don't even know what it's like to see a herd of cattle grazing on a real farm. We think we'll pass on that filet mignon at next week's company barbecue, thank you very much.
Quote #8
I saw fields and fields of black, it was this disgusting black s***, spread for miles. I saw walls of concrete fall from the sky and crush little wood houses. I saw a furry animal trying to stand up on its legs but the back ones were broken or not working, and it dragged itself with the front ones, whimpering, through someplace with gray dust, and needles coming out of the sand. Its jaws were open. I saw long cables going through the sea. (30.4)
Titus may be sleeping, but this is no dream: his feed has been hacked, and he's seeing images of environmental destruction around the world. This is like mutated frogs times 10.
Quote #9
We watched the sea move around. It was dead, but colorful.
It was blue when the sun hit it one way, and purple when the sun hit it another way, and sometimes yellow or green. We had on suits so we wouldn't smell it. (34.1-2)
Oooh, pretty. Except… you know what else looks purple, yellow, green, and blue? Oil spills on the surface of the water. Talk about dead oceans.
Quote #10
She told me about the scales on butterflies, and the way animals lived in ducts, sometimes whole herds. People would hear the stampeding through their walls. There were new kinds of fungus, she said, that were making jungles where the cables ran. There were slugs so big a toddler could ride them sidesaddle. "The natural world is so adaptable," she said. "So adaptable you wonder what's natural." (36.3)
We get a clue here that nature may have its way of fighting back against the human degradation. There are new—and kind of terrifying—life forms evolving, plus wild animals in suburbs, and bees bursting out of people's walls. Key takeaway point here: don't mess with Mother Nature. Because eventually she'll smack you down.