How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
It seizes a victim with these legs, hugs it tight, and paralyzes it with enzymes injected during a vicious bite. That one bite is the only bite it ever takes. (1.15)
Giant water bugs inject frogs with venom that melts their guts, and then the bugs suck the guts out through the bite hole. They might be evil, but at least they're efficient.
Quote #2
And we the people are so vulnerable. Our bodies are shot with mortality. Our legs are fear and our arms are time. (6.36)
Dillard symbolizes God as an archer under the ultimate cover—invisibility—and he's such a good hunter that he builds death into the bodies of his creations. We're all expiring, every day.
Quote #3
The tomcat that used to wake me is dead; he was long since grist for an earthworm's casting, and is now the clear sap of a Pittsburgh sycamore, or the honeydew of aphids sucked from that sycamore's high twigs and sprayed in sticky drops on a stranger's car. (6.56)
Here, the author presents reincarnation as scientific fact. Reincarnating as an earthworm is way less glamorous than reincarnating as royalty, but your atoms are guaranteed to live on. It's all about re-conceptualizing life and death, learning other ways to see them.
Quote #4
It turned out that the fox farm readily accepts dead horses from far and wide to use as "fresh" meat for the foxes. But it also turned out, oddly enough, that the fox farm was up to its hem in dead horses already, and had room for no more. (7.30)
When Annie's friend's horse dies, she has trouble disposing of the body. One option is to feed it to the foxes on a fur farm, but apparently there's only so much dead horse a fox can eat.
Quote #5
As far as lower animals go, if you lead a simple life you probably face a boring death. Some animals, however, lead such complicated lives that not only do the chances for any one animal's death at any minute multiply greatly, but so also do the varieties for the deaths it might die. (10.40)
It's the same for humans. Think about it: If you take up hang gliding or compete in the X-Games, your opportunities for death increase exponentially, but you certainly have more interesting stories to tell.
Quote #6
What kind of a world is this, anyway? Why not make fewer barnacle larvae and give them a decent chance? Are we dealing in life, or in death? (10.47)
Annie reasons that a god who throws down a heaping ton of insects so that a handful can live is like an engineer who needs three trains, builds a billion, puts them all on the tracks at once, and lets them crash and burn until only three are left.
Quote #7
Just think: in all the clean beautiful reaches of the solar system, our planet alone is a blot; our planet alone has death. I have to acknowledge that the sea is a cup of death and the land is a stained alter stone. […] We are escapees. We wake in terror, eat in hunger, sleep with a mouthful of blood. (10.48)
There's no way of knowing that our planet alone has death, but this is still a pretty good description of the human condition. We're all dying, every minute. (Now go watch a funny movie to recover from that truth bomb. We'll be here when you're done—but please bring us back some Sour Patch Kids.)
Quote #8
It is the thorn in the flesh of the world, another sign, if any be needed, that the world is actual and fringed, pierced here and there, and through and through, with the toothed conditions of time and the mysterious, coiled spring of death. (13.37)
She's talking about parasitism here, having just contemplated larvae that grow to adulthood at the expense of their hosts. The world is full of parasites, and some eat your guts literally, while others do it figuratively. Either way, though, we're all food.
Quote #9
I am a sacrifice bound with cords to the horns of the world's rock altar, waiting for worms. (13.57)
No, there's not a new kind of worm sacrifice you haven't heard about—"waiting for worms" refers to what happens after death. We just hope the sacrifice doesn't involve being eaten alive by grasshoppers.
Quote #10
How many people have prayed for their daily bread and famished? They die their daily death as utterly as did the frog, people, played with, dabbled upon, when God knows they loved their life. (15.14)
Unfortunately, asking for something in earnest doesn't mean you'll get it, which leads Annie to wonder if the world was created in earnest. If it's all a joke, it's a mean one.