What these sounds mean, he thought, is: I am alive and so are you. And we’re all very worried that we might not be alive for much longer, so we’ll just keep talking, because that’s better than thinking.

They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings.It's what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other People or, if it's not been a good day, The Enemy. If only they'd think up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it'd save a lot of trouble later on

The games we play are lessons we learn. The assumptions we make, things we ignore, and things we change make us what we become.

Oh, a very useful philosophical animal, your average tortoise. Outrunning metaphorical arrows, beating hares in races... very handy.