Such mental haziness is in order, given the delightful vagueness of the terrain. - William T. Vollmann

But the remarkable thing about the beetles was their sensitivity to all the grammar and directives and slogans and even unstated desires of the ant world, which they learned to manipulate. They first memorized the proper antenna-vibration and foreleg-tap which the ants themselves used to request food. The poor workers, busy going here and there and back again all day and never getting a chance to think, automatically assumed that these fearsome strangers had been authorized by the Central Committee since they knew the password, and so they regurgitated a drop or two of fruit juice on cue, much the same as when one is traveling across Europe or Asia on the train and a person in uniform requests one’s passport, one’s ticket, takes them away, and comes back, or else does not come back, having sold them; a badge and a superior manner can obtain anything in this world.

When they’d been children there’d been a fallen log in the river, and John had walked on it, keeping his balance, instructing his brother: If you don’t think about it, you won’t fall. — That would be a perfect epitaph, thought Tyler malevolently, crushing the space invader raindrops with his windshield wipers.

But, as I have said, the bugs had no interest in getting us…and no great curiosity or enthusiasm about us as such; from the cowardly cockroaches to the blind stolid ants they wanted only to be left alone to eat and breed and eat and breed, just like us.