David Ulin:

How do we connect, or reconnect, to those around us but also to the very essence of ourselves? Where, in the flatness of contemporary society ... do we find some point of intersection, some lasting depth?

Alan Lightman:

One August afternoon, the two baby ospreys of that season took flight for the first time as I stood on the circular deck of my house watching the nest. All summer long, they had watched me on that deck as I watched them. To them, it must have looked like I was in my nest just as they were in theirs. On this particular afternoon, their maiden flight, they did a loop of my house and then headed straight at me with tremendous speed. My immediate impulse was to run for cover, since they could have ripped me apart with their powerful talons. But something held me to my ground. When they were within twenty feet of me, they suddenly veered upward and away. But before that dazzling and frightening vertical climb, for about half a second we made eye contact. Words cannot convey what was exchanged between us in that instant. It was a look of connectedness, of mutual respect, of recognition that we shared the same land. After they were gone, I found that I was shaking, and in tears. To this day, I do not understand what happened in that half second. But it was one of the most profound moments of my life.

Stephen Cave:

It turns out that, with enough tweaking, a scale can be developed according to which humans come out as the brainiest. But the real lesson we might draw from this is how desperate we are to demonstrate that we are special, and how hard this is to do with any rigour.

Michiru Hoshino:

Oh! I feel it. I feel the cosmos!