No one wants to be food, but it feels somehow more demeaning to be gum.

"They Don't Want Us and We Don't Need Them", David Roth for Defector

Only the ineducable tyro can fail to sense the presence or absence of wolves, or the fact that mountains have a secret opinion about them.

A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold

This clarity sometimes comes when a new name is being screamed in the street.

"JORDAN NEELY AND DANIEL PENNY: Five Points on the May Day Murder", The Bad Side

Where the fungal era has been about venerating unknowable nonhuman maybe-intelligence and believing that hope can be dredged from ruin, the metabolic era is about submission, subsumption by the great enzyme, the desire for transformative annihilation.

"The World is Toxic. Welcome to the Metabolic Era", Kelly Prendergast for Wired

Another strong contender for perfection:

Concrete does not, objectively, promote wellness.

But unless Jonathan’s age and arrival date have been misrecorded by more than sixty years this cannot be true, which is sad because the idea of the former conqueror of most of Europe chatting away to a tortoise is appealing.

Entry about Jonathan the world's oldest tortoise on Saint Helena Island Info

Best imagined read aloud by Ian McShane specifically as the character he plays in the John Wick movies.