Quotes from The One and Only Ivan

“Memories are precious ... they help tell us who we are.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“I like colorful tales with black beginnings and stormy middles and cloudless blue-sky endings. But any story will do.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“Humans waste words. They toss them like banana peels and leave them to rot. Everyone knows the peels are the best part.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“They think I'm too old to cause trouble.
Old age is a powerful disguise.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“Homework, I have discovered, involves a sharp pencil and thick books and long sighs.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“A good zoo," Stella said, "is a large domain. A wild cage. A safe place to be. It has room to roam and humans who don't hurt." She pauses, considering her words. "A good zoo is how humans make amends.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“It's hard to put into words. Gorillas are not complainers. We're dreamers, poets, philosophers, nap takers.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“Humans. Sometimes they make chimps look smart.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“Is there anything sweeter than the touch of another as she pulls a dead bug from your fur?”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“I always tell the truth, Stella replies. Although I sometimes confuse the facts.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“Her eyes hold the pale moon in them, the way a still pond holds stars.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“Right now I would give all the yogurt raisins in all the world for a heart made of ice.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“Human can surprise you sometimes. An unpredictable species, Homo sapiens”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“With enough time, you can get used to almost anything.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“When I'm drawing a picture, I feel...quiet inside.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“The names are mine, but they're not me.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“I was born in a place humans call central Africa, in a dense rain forest so beautiful, no crayons could ever do it justice.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“But hunger, like food, comes in many shapes and colors.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“it's never to late to be what you might have been”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“Humans speak too much. They chatter like chimps, crowding the world with their noise even when they have nothing to say.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“Anger is precious. A silverback uses his anger to maintain order and warn his troop of danger. When my father beat his chest, it was to say, Beware, listen, I am in charge. I am angry to protect you, because that is what I was born to do.

Here in my domain, there is no one to protect.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“Romance
Make eye contact.
Show your form.
Strut.
Grunt.
Throw a stick.
Grunt some more.
Make some moves.
Romance is hard work.
It looks easy on TV.
I'm not sure I will ever get the hang of it.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“My visitors are often surprised when they see the TV Mack put in my domain. They seem to find it odd, the sight of a gorilla staring at tiny humans in a box. Sometimes I wonder, though: Isn't the way they stare at me, sitting in my tiny box, just as strange?”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“Growing up gorilla is just like any other kind of growing up. You make mistakes. You play. You learn. You do it all over again.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“Humans. Rats have bigger hearts. Roaches have kinder souls. Flies have-”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“All day, I watch humans scurry from store to store. They pass their green paper, dry as old leaves and smelling of a thousand hands, back and forth and back again.

They hunt frantically, stalking, pushing, grumbling. Then they leave, clutching bags filled with things - bright things, soft things, big things - but no matter how full the bags, they always come back for more.

Humans are clever indeed. They spin pink clouds you can eat. They build domains with flat waterfalls.

But they are lousy hunters.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“My family tree spreads wide as well. I am a great ape, and you are a great ape, and so are chimpanzees and orangutans and bonobos, all of us distant and distrustful cousins.

I know this is troubling.

I too find it hard to believe there is a connection across time and space, linking me to a race of ill-mannered clowns.

Chimps. There's no excuse for them.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“It’s not so bad, I wanted to tell the little boy. With enough time, you can get used to almost anything.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

“My life is flashing lights and pointing fingers and uninvited visitors. Inches away, humans flatten their little hands against the wall of glass that separates us.

The glass says you are this and we are that and that is how it will always be.”
― Katherine Applegate, quote from The One and Only Ivan

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“Sylphid was beginning to play professionally, and she was subbing as second harpist in the orchestra at Radio City Music Hall. She was called pretty regularly, once or twice a week, and she’d also got a job playing at a fancy restaurant in the East Sixties on Friday night. Ira would drive her from the Village up to the restaurant with her harp and then go and pick her and the harp up when she finished. He had the station wagon, and he’d pull up in front of the house and go inside and have to carry it down the stairs. The harp is in its felt cover, and Ira puts one hand on the column and one hand in the sound hole at the back and he lifts it up, lays the harp on a mattress they keep in the station wagon, and drives Sylphid and the harp uptown to the restaurant. At the restaurant he takes the harp out of the car and, big radio star that he is, he carries it inside. At ten-thirty, when the restaurant is finished serving dinner and Sylphid’s ready to come back to the Village, he goes around to pick her up and the whole operation is repeated. Every Friday. He hated the physical imposition that it was—those things weigh about eighty pounds—but he did it. I remember that in the hospital, when he had cracked up, he said to me, ‘She married me to carry her daughter’s harp! That’s why the woman married me! To haul that fucking harp!’ “On those Friday night trips, Ira found he could talk to Sylphid in ways he couldn’t when Eve was around. He’d ask her about being a movie star’s child. He’d say to her, ‘When you were a little girl, when did it dawn on you that something was up, that this wasn’t the way everyone grew up?’ She told him it was when the tour buses went up and down their street in Beverly Hills. She said she never saw her parents’ movies until she was a teenager. Her parents were trying to keep her normal and so they downplayed those movies around the house. Even the rich kid’s life in Beverly Hills with the other movie stars’ kids seemed normal enough until the tour buses stopped in front of her house and she could hear the tour guide saying, ‘This is Carlton Pennington’s house, where he lives with his wife, Eve Frame.’ “She told him about the production that birthday parties were for the movie stars’ kids—clowns, magicians, ponies, puppet shows, and every child attended by a nanny in a white nurse’s uniform. At the dining table, behind every child would be a nanny. The Penningtons had their own screening room and they ran movies. Kids would come over. Fifteen, twenty kids.”
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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.