"We've become so arrogant as human beings, and we have turned ourselves into consumers of nature." Elif Shafak on how we've stopped appreciating nature: "We take it for granted, but a grain of sand, a drop of water, the seemingly small, the seemingly insignificant actually says so much about the universe, because everything is interconnected." "I did a lot of research about the Yazidi minorities. In the month of April, if children are running around, jumping up and down as children do, the Yazidi grandmothers gently warn them. Why? Because according to them, in the month of April, the earth is pregnant. And so when you walk, you need to walk softly, you need to tread gently." "Now, to our rational modern minds, this is just an irrational thing. Of course the earth is pregnant. You're going to see all these flowers blooming, the fruits. This idea that you need to tread gently because it's alive, you can't stomp on it." "Only a culture that has not disconnected itself from nature can come up with this kind of storytelling."