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" It is true that nothing here makes any sense, but this is no great misfortune; I learned from the islanders that sense is not of any particular importance, that its presence may even disrupt the clean lines of certain pictures and cast a cloud over their fine light, while laments on the absurdity of being struck me as self-indulgent and objectionable even before my stay on the island. Once you get a little used to a terrain cleansed of sense, you realize that there is amusement enough to be had here, and that only in its emptiness can the magic crystals of beauty originate. And in this space something is revealed: the silent dignity of people, animals, plants and objects, that is able to stir graciousness, compassion and reverence. "
― Michal Ajvaz , The Golden Age
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" In Galapagos, as elsewhere, things of the mind, including intellectual ramifications from evolutionary theory, and things of the spirit, like the feeling one gets from a Queen Anne’s lace of stars in the moonless Galapagean sky, struggle toward accommodation with an elementary desire for material comfort…because so many regard this archipelago as preeminently a terrain of the mind and spirit, a locus of biological thought and psychological rejuvenation. The sheer strength of Darwin’s insight into the development of biological life gently urges a visitor to be more than usually observant here- to notice, say, that while the thirteen Galapagean finches are all roughly the same hue, it is possible to separate them according to marked differences in the shapes of their bills and feeding habits. "
― Barry Lopez , About This Life