Vanessa Woods · 278 pages
Rating: (1.7K votes)
“We do terrible things to the ones we love. We cheat and lie and betray them, for thirty pieces of silver or our own selfish hearts. The only way love endures is because of one simple gift. Forgiveness.”
― Vanessa Woods, quote from Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo
“When I talk to people about what makes us human, some people say it’s our tears. Because we are the only ones who weep, only we can feel true sorrow. When I hear this, I remember Isiro’s face, her anguished eyes as she cried for Mikeno, how she screamed at the keepers with her teeth bared and pushed at the poles. How she dashed back to his body and dug her fingers into his chest as if the strength of her grip could bring him back. There is sorrow without tears. Of course there is.”
― Vanessa Woods, quote from Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo
“It is a cumulative tragedy, the same tragedy that blights the entire country. With so many dead bodies, how do you begin to rebuild? How do you trust enough to hope? And how do you hold on to life when it no longer seems worth living?”
― Vanessa Woods, quote from Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo
“If there are those you love, whoever or wherever you are, hold them. Find them and hold them as tightly as you can. Resist their squirming and impatience and uncomfortable laughter, and just feel their heart throbbing against yours. Give thanks that for this moment, for this one precious moment, they are here, they are with you, and they know they are utterly, completely, entirely loved.”
― Vanessa Woods, quote from Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo
“When Joseph Conrad saw how Europeans behaved in Congo in 1890, he described them as “reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage…To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.” More than a hundred years later, not much has changed.”
― Vanessa Woods, quote from Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo
“There is something in the eyes of a bonobo that you don’t see in those of a tiger or a shark. They are human eyes, but not the cautious glimpse of a stranger you pass on a city street, or the pretended interest of a shrink you’re paying $300 an hour. Or someone you think you recognize but don’t. The eyes of a bonobo are the eyes of your best friend or a lover or a priest. They see into you. They see nothing else. They invite confession.”
― Vanessa Woods, quote from Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo
“The power of sadness has always amazed me.”
― Vanessa Woods, quote from Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo
“The Chinese say that love is balance. He is the water to my fire.The chimpanzee to my bonobo. And when I am mired in life’s ugliness, when I can see only what’s decaying both inside and outside my own head, he is the blindness I need, the mindless faith in happy endings.”
― Vanessa Woods, quote from Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo
“Claudine tells me there was fluid around Bolombe’s heart. That the stress of his capture was too much. I always thought hearts were broken, but apparently they drown.”
― Vanessa Woods, quote from Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo
Vanessa Woods
Born place: in Australia
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“Nancy thought Bean was a pain and a pest. Bean thought Nancy was a booger-head.”
― Annie Barrows, quote from Ivy and Bean
“Theo explained, in what he thought was perfect Spanish, that Julio needed extra help with his algebra. Evidently, she did not understand perfect Spanish because she asked Julio what Theo was talking about.”
― John Grisham, quote from Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer
“has a client. Mr. Boone is working.” This was usually the case. Theo’s mother, when she wasn’t in court, spent most of her time with clients, almost all of whom were women who (1) wanted a divorce, or (2) needed a divorce, or (3) were in the process of getting a divorce, or (4) were suffering through the aftermath of a divorce. It was difficult work, but his mother was known as one of the top divorce lawyers in town. Theo was quite proud of this. He was also proud of the fact that his mother encouraged every new client to seek professional counseling in an effort to save the marriage. Sadly, though, as he’d already learned, some marriages cannot be saved. He bounced up the stairs with Judge at his heels and barged into the”
― John Grisham, quote from The Abduction
“I recall thinking that I was stroking toward either the end of all life or the beginning of a new one. Neither possibility stirred me. Every man knows he will die; and nobody believes it. On that paradox stand not only a host of religions but the entity of sane being. I wasn't able to credit my own non-existence any better than the next man; what I had lost was a healthy abhorrence of the state. It had not dropped from me because of any particular shock or misfortune. It had moulted from me year by year, for all of my thirty-five, to leave me naked in apathy.”
― John Myers Myers, quote from Silverlock
“Sergeant Bellow marched us to the quartermaster’s. It was there we were stripped of all vestiges of personality. It is the quartermasters who make soldiers, sailors and marines. In their presence, one strips down. With each divestment, a trait is lost; the discard of a garment marks the quiet death of an idiosyncrasy. I take off my socks; gone is a propensity for stripes, or clocks, or checks, or even solids; ended is a tendency to combine purple socks with brown tie. My socks henceforth will be tan. They will neither be soiled, nor rolled, nor gaudy, nor restrained, nor holey. They will be tan. The only other thing they may be is clean.”
― Robert Leckie, quote from Helmet for My Pillow
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