Every time we eat a fruit, we engage in a reproductive act.

The playwright Edward Albee has characterized [the suddenness of the appearance of fruits and flowers in evolutionary history] as 'that heartbreaking second when it all got together: the sugars and the acids and the ultraviolets, and the next thing you knew there were tangerines and string quartets.

To experience biophilia is to love a diversity that, as limitless as it is fragile, both haunts us and fills us with hope.

...avacados, prickly pears and papayas used to be gulped down whole, seeds and all, by fridge-sized armadillos called glyptodonts.

As Marshall McLuhan pointed out, we've become so removed from reality that we're starting to prefer artificiality.

I look down at my list of fruits and recite the names under my breath, syncing into the rhythms of nearby batucada drummers. Softly chanting, I close my eyes, and feel a sense of peace. For a moment, I forget everything. I forget my name. I forget why I came here. All I know is abacaxí, açai, ameixa, cupuaçu, graviola, maracujá, taperebá, uva, umbu.