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1 " People look at you peculiar if you talk about the feeling you got for animals, saying animals have no souls, no sense of good or bad, no value up next to humans," he said. "I don't know about that. Sometimes I think animals are the ones who should be saying such things about us." He shook his head. "Animals can tear your heart out. They can maim you. They can kill you dead on instinct alone and saunter into the next minute like it was nothing. But at least you know the ground rules with animals. You can count the cost of breaking the rules. You never know with people. Even the good can hurt you bad, and the bad, well, they're going to hurt you but good." He dropped his arm from the window to rub his gnarled hand. "It's why I keep choosing animals. Even if it kills me. One day, it probably will. "
― Lynda Rutledge , West with Giraffes
2 " Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened. —Anatole France, Nobel Laureate, 1921 "
3 " It is a foolish man who thinks stories do not matter—when in the end, they may be all that matter and all the forever we’ll ever know. "
4 " Home’s not the place you’re from, Woody. Home’s the place you want to be. "
5 " It’s a strange thing how you can spend years with some folks and never know them, yet, with others, you only need a handful of days to know them far beyond years. "
6 " In a long life, there is a singular moment when you know you’ve made more memories than any new ones you’ll ever make. That’s the moment your truest stories—the ones that made you the you that you became—are ever more in the front of your mind, as you begin to reach back for the you that you deemed best. "
7 " In a long life, there is a singular moment when you know you’ve made more memories than any new ones you’ll ever make. "
8 " The land you grow up in is a forever thing, remembered when all else is forgotten, whether it did you right or did you wrong. "
9 " Time heals all wounds they say. I'm here to tell you that time can wound you all on its own. "
10 " Because if ever I could claim to have seen the face of God, it was in the colossal faces of those giraffes. "
11 " Animals can tear your heart out. They can maim you. They can kill you dead on instinct alone and saunter into the next minute like it was nothing. But at least you know the ground rules with animals. You can count the cost of breaking the rules. You never know with people. Even the good can hurt you bad, and the bad, well, they’re going to hurt you but good. "
12 " You can carry around a heavy load only for so long, though, before you’ve got to set it down, "
13 " The land you grow up in is a forever thing, remembered when all else is forgotten, whether it did you right or did you wrong. Even when it flat near kills you. Even when it invades your dreams and stokes your nightmares. Even when you run from it never to return, then find yourself headed straight back for it, and the best you can wish for is to drive through it with your head down and your wits about you, dodging the worst of it so you can get on with your young life somewhere else. "
14 " The thing about destiny and fate and God-sized coincidences is that they fly in the face of being the master of your own life. "
15 " whenever I locked eyes with an animal I felt something more soulful than I ever felt from the humans I knew, and what I saw in that sprawled giraffe’s eye made me ache to the bone. "
16 " The thing about knowing you’re doing something for the last time is that it takes the joy right out of it. "
17 " Animals are complete all on their own, living by voices we don’t get to hear, having a knowing far beyond our paltry ken. And giraffes, they seem to know something more. Elephants, tigers, monkeys, zebras . . . whatever you feel around the rest, you feel different around giraffes. "
18 " I’d been there not six weeks, Dust Bowl dirt still coating my young rowdy’s lungs—and despite my God-fearing ma, that’s what I was, a dirt-farm rowdy, pure as a cow pie, cunning as a wild hog, and already well acquainted with the county sheriff, the dust layering my every breath leaving little room for the Holy Spirit to breathe on me. "
19 " Other people say grace. Me, I say thanks to what I’m eating. Its life for mine.” He paused, absently rubbing his sorry-looking hand. “Soon enough, I’ll be returning the favor even if it’s only to the worms. We’re just meat when it’s all done. That’s the natural order. What do I care where my meat goes after I’m not using it anymore?” he said, standing up. “Not that I wouldn’t mind being thanked. "
20 " Life is life no matter who or what is living it, boy—a thing to respect,” he said. “You don’t get that, then you’re just a waste of skin. "
