West With Giraffes Quotes

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened. —Anatole France, Nobel Laureate, 1921

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.

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.

Home’s not the place you’re from, Woody. Home’s the place you want to be.

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.

Time heals all wounds they say. I'm here to tell you that time can wound you all on its own.

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.

The thing about knowing you’re doing something for the last time is that it takes the joy right out of it.

Because if ever I could claim to have seen the face of God, it was in the colossal faces of those giraffes.

You can carry around a heavy load only for so long, though, before you’ve got to set it down,

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.

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.

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.

That’s your first story, but it doesn’t have to be your only story. That’s up to you.

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.

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.

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.

EPILOGUE AUTHOR’S NOTE HISTORICAL NOTES ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened. —Anatole France, Nobel Laureate, 1921

Animals are complete all their own, living voices we don't get to hear, having a knowing far beyond our paltry ken.

Some things are so much yours that you’ve got to keep them to yourself. For

The thing about knowing you’re doing something for the last time is that it takes the joy right out of it. I’ve done lots of things for the last time in my long life, but I didn’t know it.

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.

Memories stick to things. Out of nowhere, something finds your nose, ears, or eyes and you’re on the other side of the country or world or in a whole other decade, being kissed by a doe-eyed beauty or punched by a drunken pal.

God knows I was due a little Light Shining on me from Above, whether I believed in such things or not. Like most people, denying it never got in the way of relying on it. Here and now, older than old, I’ve lived long enough to believe then not believe, then believe and not believe more times than I can count, life being the bumpy ride it is. But

Storytelling matters now. Emotion matters. Our imagination has become an ecological force.” May it be so.

whenever I locked eyes with an animal I felt something more soulful than I ever felt from the humans I knew,

Life is life no matter who or what is living it, boy—a thing to respect,

Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes

Time spent with animals is added to your life,” joking how I’d live to be a hundred, if that isn’t a kicker.

The admirablest and fairest beast ever I sawe was a jarraff . . . prince of all the beasts.

I’d say I was lucky, but I hadn’t had enough of a relationship with the word to use it.

For a mile, the Old Man and I rode in blessed silence, the giraffes looking back like they’d acquired a taste for gospel singing, with the windshield wipers slapping time.

one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened. —Anatole France, Nobel Laureate, 1921

Woman you’re high as the nuts on a giraffe, you know that?

The thing about knowing you're doing something for the last time is that it takes the joy right out of it.

your shriveled stomach’s aching with hunger, you forget all about your hungry heart. And you keep on forgetting it a little each day until a stray dog has more heart or soul than you.

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.

Time heals all wounds, they say. I’m here to tell you that time can wound you all on its own. 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. So

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.

I’ve tried to forget what it was like as a stray boy heading toward Cuz. I was barely human after the first wretched few days, and as time went on I cared less about being so. When your shriveled stomach’s aching with hunger, you forget all about your hungry heart. And you keep on forgetting it a little each day until a stray dog has more heart or soul than you.

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.

NATIONAL ZOO over the FRANCIS SCOTT KEY BRIDGE. The traffic was getting thicker,

The thing about knowing you’re doing something for the last time is that it takes the joy right out of it. I’ve

I’ve been told since that there’s a name for something like it—a murmuration—a rare bird gathering that looks like a dancing cloud.

I can say she was the love of my first life.

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.

what I saw in that sprawled giraffe’s eye made me ache to the bone. The giraffe’s eye

Like they say, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. But that never kept a beggar from wishing.

the giraffes were already working their giraffe magic on me

We saw more Hoovervilles set up helter-skelter

Time spent with animals is added to your life,

When you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, that’s all life is—you’re nothing but a feral thing chasing your hunger every minute of the day.

Destiny is a mobile thing — that every choice you make, along with every choice made around you, can cause it to spin this way and that, offering destinies galore.

But if a man leads a handful of lives inside a long life like mine, I can say she was the love of my first life. That I can

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. So, shouldn’t you hear our story?

She shook her head, mad at the

with the hubris of a selfish boy with nothing behind and everything ahead,

I’ve been told since that there’s a name for something like it—a murmuration—a rare bird gathering that looks like a dancing cloud. Nobody ever explained the forever-flowing ribbon quite to fit my memory, though. Against the unforgiving land of my hardscrabble childhood, where the term natural wonder had no meaning, the sight filled me with a sense of exactly

Problem was, 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.

The thing about birthdays is you’re rocking along drawing breath, living sunrise to sunrise, becoming who you’ll become without a thought put to it—until the day you popped into this world arrives. Then whatever happens, good or bad, you’ll forever mark it in memory along with the passage of ticking time, a date on a calendar forcing you to look behind with no way to change things and look ahead with no way to know what’s coming.

Like most people, denying it never got in the way of relying on it. Here and now, older than old, I’ve lived long enough to believe then not believe, then believe and not believe more times than I can count, life being the bumpy ride it is.

Did you know giraffes in the wild only live about twenty-five years at the most? Their hearts give out too quick, I guess, pumping up and down that neck. They're truly blessed not knowing it, but oh, those sky-high eyes of theirs. They've seen the world.

There was no room for such weakness past being a boy in knickers, especially when, at the risk of hellfire, the worst two-legged human was better than any soulless four-legged animal—or so I was taught. Problem was, 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.

There are far more salvations than the kind you find in church, and I was in need of one right then to save me from myself. Because here was where I would begin to grasp not only the first stink of my waffling young soul but also that destiny is a mobile thing—that every choice you make, along with every choice made around you, can cause it to spin this way and that, offering destinies galore.

Time heals all wounds, they say. I’m here to tell you that time can wound you all on its own. 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.

Problem was, 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. The giraffe’s eye had stopped moving, taking on a pallor I’d seen too many times in an animal’s eyes right before my pa would be deciding whether to eat, bury, or burn them. I pushed in closer, waiting for the seamen, all looking like damp hell themselves, to shove me back where I belonged

An early glass-ceiling breaker, Benchley came to the fledgling San Diego Zoo in 1925 as a civil servant bookkeeper and quickly began doing everything from taking tickets to sweeping cages in the burgeoning but always-cash-strapped zoo, until she soon took over directorial chores after a series of male directors didn’t last. While she was known in newsprint and popular culture by the time of our tale as the only female zoo director in the world, the official title given her by the

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. When things are falling your way, it’s an easy idea to give up. But when they’re not . . .

Never trust a woman who wants to see your giraffe.

We both fell silent, mesmerized by the rippling birds, so much so that I forgot about everything else. For two full hours, my sideview mirror was brimming with both birds and giraffes, framing it all like a picture, the giraffes’ long necks swaying along with the billowing birds, and each glance surprised me with what I can only describe as a jolt of joy. On and on it went. The sky kept drizzling, the giraffes kept bobbing, and the birds kept flying, giving the Old Man and me plenty of time to muse. I’ve been told since that there’s a name for something like it—a murmuration—a rare bird gathering that looks like a dancing cloud. Nobody ever explained the forever-flowing ribbon quite to fit my memory, though. Against the unforgiving land of my hardscrabble childhood, where the term natural wonder had no meaning, the sight filled me with a sense of exactly that—wonder.

And mailed fleas to somebody back East for a flea circus until the post office got wind of it.

In the years to come, as the War took over the world and the prospect of going extinct ourselves, by our own hands, became a thing we were forced to ponder, I’d find myself thinking back to that moment of the vanishing murmur, feeling a soul-weary loss beyond explaining. That day, though, it was only an odd traveling melancholy without a name, a feeling as drizzly as the rain still spitting at us from above.

Animals are complete all on their own, living by voices we don’t get to hear, having a knowing far beyond our paltry ken.

folks and wide-eyed ragamuffins gaping at the passing giraffes

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. When

thing about destiny and fate and God-sized coincidences is that they fly in the face of being the master of your own life. When things are falling your way, it’s an easy idea to give up. But when they’re not .

What’s wrong with you? It’s just an animal!” my pa kept saying. There was no room for such weakness past being a boy in knickers, especially when, at the risk of hellfire, the worst two-legged human was better than any soulless four-legged animal—or so I was taught. Problem was, 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.

because everybody wants to see a giraffe. Some folks need to. Considering what you went through to be here, seems you’re one of those that needs to.

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

Some things are so much yours that you’ve got to keep them to yourself. For thirty years, that’s what I did. I shared my life with the giraffes and they did the same with me, us three keeping our story our own, until the day Girl and Boy were both gone. Then the years turned into decades. And I kept on living. Time heals all wounds, they say. I’m here to tell you that time can wound you all on its own. 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.

In a famous 2014 TED talk, nature writer Jon Mooallem suggested how we feel about an animal dramatically influences its future survival. In his words: “Storytelling matters now. Emotion matters. Our imagination has become an ecological force.” May it be so.

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

hadn’t noticed was that my mind was wearing out, too. Time plays its cruelest trick without you knowing it. Even the memories a body holds most dear become like scratchy old phonograph records played too long, fading in and out, with little sound and

Because if ever I could claim to have seen the face of God, it was in the colossal faces of the giraffes. If ever I had a story I should be leaving behind, it’d be this one, for them, all of them, and for you. So, here and now, before it’s too late, I have written it down.

And one bright and blessed morning, the giraffes, the Old Man, me—and your ma—will find our winding way forever to you.

So it was that after every living thing I’d ever loved was gone—taking with them big chunks of my very soul

The next day through the desert was what the Old Man would surely have dreamed every day on that trip would've been, the passage through such wide-open space a surprise in its pleasure...long, and lingering, and soul-seething deep.

The thing about knowing you’re doing something for the last time is that it takes the joy right out of it. I’ve done lots of things for the last time in my long life, but I didn’t know it. This time I’d know it.

The Old Man, almost smiling, even let the children feed the giraffes some onions.

The sky had cleared a bit, the dust gone, the clouds high and patchy, racing past the stars.

The land was having its revenge, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and it was past time to quit even if you didn’t know what to quit

Instead such times held less pain because of two animals I once knew.

I’d felt free of the fury long enough to know I wanted to stay that way.

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 life somewhere else.

destiny is a mobile thing—that every choice you make, along with every choice made around you, can cause it to spin this way and that, offering destinies galore. I had a choice to make.

Problem was, whenever I locked eyes with an animal I felt something more soulful than I ever felt from the humans I knew,

Being on the road’s no song, though. Not if you’re a stray. There’s nothing more pitiful than a wandering creature who was never meant to be wild.

You ever wake up covered in dust, the air so thick with it you have to suck it in or die? You ever wake up with the fear that another of your animals, sucking in the same dust, didn’t make it through the night?

There’s no explaining the world, boy. How you come into it. Where you find yourself. Or who your friends turn out to be—be you man or be you beast.” With that, he got out of the truck and

such times held less pain because of two animals I once knew.