plants are obvious stand-ins for the other in the broadest sense, and the fearful attitude toward plants’ motives is evidence of a deep, if sublimated, awareness of the violence of empire.

the plant’s role in a mystery plot depends on the author’s attitude toward the benevolence—or violence—of the natural world.

it follows that plants could effectively serve as witnesses, offering testimony of a sort.

recurrent belief that the capacity to register trauma, that of oneself or another, is a marker of sentience.

A world is forged through copenetration; immersion is always reciprocal.

Immersion is not one-way but rather a type of mutual copenetration, continuous and constant:

“One cannot separate the plant—neither physically nor metaphysically—from the world that accommodates it.”

it is true that people are the makers of one another, and also the makers and the products of so many other species. People gestate and are gestated by them, inhale and ingest matter and emit molecules in new combinations.

Erotic energy is made political by being made ecological.