About "Adaptation"

Susan Orlean: There are more than thirty thousand known orchid species. One species looks like a German shepherd...
... one looks like an onion, one looks like an octopus. One looks like a school teacher, one looks like a gymnast, one looks like a Midwestern beauty queen, one looks like a New York intellectual with whom you'd do the Sunday Times crossword puzzle in bed. One looks like that girl in high school with creamy skin. One has eyes that dance. One has eyes that contain the sadness of the world.
Nothing in science can account for the way some people feel about orchids. Those love them, love them madly.
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Susan Orlean: I wanted to want something as much as people wanted these plants but it isn't part of my constitution.
I suppose I do have one unembarrassed passion. I want to know how it feels to care about something passionately.
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John Laroche: You know why I like plants?
Susan Orlean: Nuh uh.
John Laroche: Because they're so mutable. Adaptation is a profound process. Means you figure out how to thrive in the world.
Susan Orlean: Yeah but it's easier for plants. I mean they have no memory. They just move on to whatever's next. With a person though, adapting almost shameful. It's like running away.
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Susan Orlean: What I didn't say to him is that life seemed to be filled with things that were just like the ghost orchid - wonderful to imagine and easy to fall in love with but a little fantastic and fleeting and out of reach.
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Susan Orlean: There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.