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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

She shook her head, mad at the

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 spent with animals is added to your life,

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes

the giraffes were already working their giraffe magic on me

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

We saw more Hoovervilles set up helter-skelter

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

When I’d lived a little longer and heard people talking about such things, calling it by spiritual names, I’d want to scoff but couldn’t. In the years ahead, through the War and beyond, it was this quiet day moving through the unmoving land with Boy and Girl and the Old Man and Red that I returned to when I needed it most.

So it was that after every living thing I’d ever loved was done – taking with them big chunks of my very soul… I found myself thinking about Red, the Old Man, and the giraffes more that I had in decades, my mind traveling back back, back to the boy driving the hurricane giraffes. I quaked at he raggedy man I’d have surely become without a hurricane blowing me to the giraffes, and I marveled at the power of a soul’s truest story to staunch life’s cruelest one. I could’ve lived my entire life in the shadow of Dust Bowl miseries and Hitler horror. Instead such times held less pain because of two animals I one knew.

By the time we were watching the moon set on one side of us and the sun rise on the other, we’d all fallen into a moving bit of peace. I’d felt a sliver of that peaceful feeling after we’d made it through the mountains. This time, through, it was longer and lingering and soul-soothing deep. It seems now like the closest thing to praying I’d ever done. When I’d lived a little longer and heard people talking about such things, calling it by spiritual names I’d wanted to scoff but couldn’t. In the years ahead, through the War and beyond, it was this quiet day moving through the unmoving land with Boy and Girl and the Old man and Red that I returned to when I needed it most. Like the jolting joys of giraffes amid the traveling bird wave, tis peace passed any understanding, any attempt at words. You only get a few of those in your whole life if you’re lucky, and some only get one. If that be true, this was my one. When I remember it, I’m not eighteen in the memory. I am whatever age its comfort came to me, be it 33, or 103, and I am driving us all, through the timeless red desert, headed to nowhere in particular, just someplace good. Together.

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.

The giraffes stirred from their sleep-standing to watch me settle back into my sentry spot. Then they lay down . . . both of them together . . . with me and only me standing guard for lions above. And I thought my heart would bust.

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.

Shouldn’t you know your mother’s brave heart and daring dreams?

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.

But if you really want to know, it always seemed wrong to think an animal’s life isn’t worth as much as a human’s. Life is life.

NIGGER, DON’T LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON YOU HERE

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.

The other was a ramshackle general store and post office that looked like it might topple if you gave it a good push. The

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 in the front of your mind, as you begin to reach back for the you that you deemed best.

And giraffes, they seem to know something more. Elephants, tigers, monkeys, zebras . . . whatever you feel around the rest, you feel different around giraffes.

But at least you know the ground rules with animals.

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

That’s when we saw the elephant and the dog. A short, wiry man wearing a straw hat was just walking his dog and his elephant along the road.

peck of a kiss more comfort

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.

Most times you’re lucky if you get your ending. If this is our ending, it’s a gotdam happy one.

I never trusted a soul who didn’t like animals.

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.

I found myself back in 1938, traveling the winding roads of America with two young giraffes, seeing things in my mind’s eye no one will ever see again and imagining how those two animals must have made people they met all the more human.

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.

There are other times, though, when you feel a shift down deep in your bones.

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.

Her first book, My Life in a Man-Made Jungle, was published in 1940, becoming an international bestseller, and was sent to soldiers overseas as a morale booster. She

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

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

Belle Benchley’s memoir My Life in a Man-Made Jungle being an international bestseller

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.

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

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.

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 .

Truth is, I’m not sure what your ma was to me, even now. Nothing I come up with rings true. I didn’t know her long enough to say she was the love of my life, although it can deeply feel that way here and now as I write.

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 surely say.

whenever I locked eyes with an animal