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.”
“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.”
“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?”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The power of sadness has always amazed me.”
“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.”
“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.”
“A person less fortunate than yourself deserves the best you can give. Because of duty, and honor, and service. You understand those words? You should do your job right, and you should do it well, simply because you can, without looking for notice or reward.”
“El, you are telling me to run away with a man to become his mistress."
"I am telling you to be happy. Even if it lasts only a little while. We must snatch what we can when we have the chance. Life is so very lonely when we don't.”
“It disappointed me when I discerned as an adolescent that my father had married my mother only for her beauty, but this was before I realized that parents disappoint us in many ways and it is best not to expect anything of them at all, for chances are that they won't be able to deliver it.”
“I know there isn’t anything I can say right now to make it better, so I just hold her, offering her the one thing I wish she would take and never let go of. Me.”
“Jack. “It’s a picture of these woods!”
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