Quotes from The Zookeeper's Wife

“I watched her face switch among the radio stations of memory”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“...he'd know about the role of mirror neurons in the brain, special cells in the premotor cortex that fire right before a person reaches for a rock, steps forward, turns away, begins to smile.Amazingly, the same neurons fire whether we do something or watch someone else do the same thing, and both summon similar feelings. Learning form our own mishaps isn't as safe as learning from someone else's, which helps us decipher the world of intentions, making our social whirl possible. The brain evolved clever ways to spy or eavesdrop on risk, to fathom another's joy or pain quickly, as detailed sensations, without resorting to words. We feel what we see, we experience others as self.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“Why was it, she asked herself, that 'animals can sometimes subdue their predatory ways in only a few months, while humans, despite centuries of refinement, can quickly grow more savage than any beast.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“God may promise not to destroy creation, but it is not a promise humankind made - to our peril.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“I don't understand all the fuss. If any creature is in danger, you save it, human or animal.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“For if I do something, I never do it thoughtlessly.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“Germany's crime is the greatest crime the world has ever known, because it is not on the scale of History: it is on the scale of Evolution.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“Antonina felt convinced that people needed to connect more with their animal nature, but also that animals long for human company, reach out for human attention.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“Suffering took hold of me like a magic spell abolishing all differences between friends and strangers.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“A good strategy should dictate the right actions. Any action mustn't be impulsive, but analyzed along with all its possible outcomes. A solid plan always includes many backups and alternatives.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“The idea of safety had shrunk into particles - one snug moment, then the next. Meanwhile, the brain piped fugues of worry and staged mind-theaters full of tragedies and triumphs, because unfortunately, the fear of death does wonders to focus the mind, inspire creativity, and heightens the senses. Trusting one's hunches only seems gamble if one has time for seem; otherwise the brain goes on autopilot and trades the elite craft of analysis for the best rapid insights that float up from its danger files and ancient bag of tricks.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“How do you retain a spirit of affection and humor in a crazed, homicidal, unpredictable society?”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“As fleeting emotions stalk it, a face can leak fear or the guilt of a forming lie.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“The Lutz heck that emerges from his writings and actions drifted like a weather vane: charming when need be, cold-blooded when need be, tigerish or endearing, depending on his goal. Still, it is surprising that Heck the zoologist chose to ignore the accepted theory of hybrid vigor: that interbreeding strengthens a bloodline. He must have known that mongrels enjoy better immune systems and have more tricks up their genetic sleeves, while in a closely knit species, however "perfect," any illness that kills one animal threatens to wipe out all the others, which is why zoos keep careful studbooks of endangered animals such as cheetahs and forest bison and try to mate them advantageously. In any case, in the distant past, long before anyone was recognizably Aryan, our ancestors shared the world with other flavors of hominids, and interbreeding among neighbors often took place, producing hardier, nastier offspring who thrived. All present-day humans descend from that robust, talkative mix, specifically from a genetic bottleneck of only about one hundred individuals. A 2006 study of mitochondrial DNA tracks Ashkenazi Jews (about 92 percent of the world’s Jews in 1931) back to four women, who migrated from the Near East to Italy in the second and third centuries. All of humanity can be traced back to the gene pool of one person, some say to a man, some a woman. It’s hard to imagine our fate being as iffy as that, be we are natural wonders.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“Every day our life was full of thoughts of the horrible present, and even our own death.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“The Germans have removed, murdered or burned alive tens of thousands of Jews. Out of the three million Polsih Jews, no more than 10 percent remain.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“More broadly, the Nazis were ardent animal lovers and environmentalists who promoted calisthenics and healthy living, regular trips into the countryside, and far-reaching animal rights policies as they rose to power. Göring took pride in sponsoring wildlife sanctuaries ("green”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“I can't breathe," she said. "I feel like I'm drowning in a gray sea, like they're flooding the whole city, washing away our past and people, dashing everything from the face of the earth." Jammed”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“The faint pink coating the treetops promised rippling buds, a sure sign of spring hastening in, right on schedule, and the animal world getting ready for its fiesta of courting and mating, dueling and dancing, suckling and grubbing, costume-making and shedding-in short, the fuzzy, fizzy hoopla of life's ramshackle return.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“Every moment is great, we were taught, every moment s unique.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“All our senses feed the brain, and if it diets mainly on cruelty and suffering, how can it remain healthy? Change that diet, on purpose, train mentally to refocus the mind, and one nourishes the brain.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“All our senses feed the brain, and if it diets mainly on cruelty and suffering, how can it remain healthy? Change that diet, on purpose, train mentally to refocus the mind, and one nourishes the brain. Rabbi”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“Europe enjoyed a heritage of fairy tales alive with talking animals--some almost real, other deliciously bogus-- to spark child's fantasies and gallop grownups to the cherished haunts of childhood. It pleased Antonina that her zoo offered on orient of fabled creatures, where book pages sprang alive and people could parley with ferocious animals.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“Not long ago the world looked on the dark ages with contempt for its brutality, yet here it is again, in full force, a lawless sadism unpolished by all the charms of religion and civilization." Sitting”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“Although Mengele's subjects could be operated on without any painkillers at all, a remarkable example of Nazi zoophilia is that a leading biologist was once punished for not giving worms enough anesthesia during an experiment.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“Man is a messenger who forgot the message”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“She's so sensitive, she's almost able to read their minds. . .. She becomes them. . .. She has a precise and very special gift, a way of observing and understanding animals that's rare, a sixth sense. . .. It's been this way since she was little." In”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“One of the most remarkable things about Antonina was her determination to include play, animals, wonder, curiosity, marvel, and a wide blaze of innocence in a household where all dodged the ambient dangers, horrors, and uncertainties. That takes a special stripe of bravery rarely valued in wartime. While”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“Why was it, she asked herself, that "animals can sometimes subdue their predatory ways in only a few months, while humans, despite centuries of refinement, can quickly grow more savage than any beast"?”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

“It's not enough to do research from a distance. It's by living beside animals that you learn their behavior and psychology.”
― Diane Ackerman, quote from The Zookeeper's Wife

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“He remembered hearing Karl tell James once that it was hard for people to ever know what they really looked like. Reflections in mirrors weren’t accurate, Karl said, because when you stared at yourself in a mirror, you subconsciously composed your face in a way that wasn’t your natural expression.

Marvin wondered it that was true when you were with strangers too. Maybe you only looked like your true self with the people you loved. And maybe that was a face you yourself hardly ever got to see…”
― Elise Broach, quote from Masterpiece

“Books are a bad family - there are those you love, and those you are indifferent to; idiots and mad cousins who you would banish except others enjoy their company; wrongheaded but fascinating eccentrics and dreamy geniuses; orphaned grandchildren; and endless brothers-in-law simply taking up space who you wish you could send straight to hell. Except you can't, for the most part. You must house them and make them comfortable and worry about them when they go on trips and there is never enough room.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, quote from The Giant's House

“The Taoist and Zen conception of perfection... the dynamic nature of their philosophy laid more stress upon the process through which perfection was sought than upon perfection itself. True beauty could be discovered only by one who mentally completed the incomplete. The virility of life and art lay in its possibilities for growth.”
― Kakuzō Okakura, quote from The Book of Tea

“Live or die, but don't poison everything...

Well, death's been here
for a long time --
it has a hell of a lot
to do with hell
and suspicion of the eye
and the religious objects
and how I mourned them
when they were made obscene
by my dwarf-heart's doodle.
The chief ingredient
is mutilation.
And mud, day after day,
mud like a ritual,
and the baby on the platter,
cooked but still human,
cooked also with little maggots,
sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother,
the damn bitch!

Even so,
I kept right on going on,
a sort of human statement,
lugging myself as if
I were a sawed-off body
in the trunk, the steamer trunk.
This became perjury of the soul.
It became an outright lie
and even though I dressed the body
it was still naked, still killed.
It was caught
in the first place at birth,
like a fish.
But I play it, dressed it up,
dressed it up like somebody's doll.

Is life something you play?
And all the time wanting to get rid of it?
And further, everyone yelling at you
to shut up. And no wonder!
People don't like to be told
that you're sick
and then be forced
to watch
you
come
down with the hammer.

Today life opened inside me like an egg
and there inside
after considerable digging
I found the answer.
What a bargain!
There was the sun,
her yolk moving feverishly,
tumbling her prize --
and you realize she does this daily!
I'd known she was a purifier
but I hadn't thought
she was solid,
hadn't known she was an answer.
God! It's a dream,
lovers sprouting in the yard
like celery stalks
and better,
a husband straight as a redwood,
two daughters, two sea urchings,
picking roses off my hackles.
If I'm on fire they dance around it
and cook marshmallows.
And if I'm ice
they simply skate on me
in little ballet costumes.

Here,
all along,
thinking I was a killer,
anointing myself daily
with my little poisons.
But no.
I'm an empress.
I wear an apron.
My typewriter writes.
It didn't break the way it warned.
Even crazy, I'm as nice
as a chocolate bar.
Even with the witches' gymnastics
they trust my incalculable city,
my corruptible bed.

O dearest three,
I make a soft reply.
The witch comes on
and you paint her pink.
I come with kisses in my hood
and the sun, the smart one,
rolling in my arms.
So I say Live
and turn my shadow three times round
to feed our puppies as they come,
the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown,
despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy!
Despite the pails of water that waited,
to drown them, to pull them down like stones,
they came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blue
and fumbling for the tiny tits.
Just last week, eight Dalmatians,
3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord wood
each
like a
birch tree.
I promise to love more if they come,
because in spite of cruelty
and the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens,
I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann.
The poison just didn't take.
So I won't hang around in my hospital shift,
repeating The Black Mass and all of it.
I say Live, Live because of the sun,
the dream, the excitable gift.”
― Anne Sexton, quote from The Complete Poems

“- Ama Kardinal Hazretleri, izin verirseniz söyleyeyim. Biz, öteki ressamlar ellerimizle konuşuruz...
- Olmadı, diyerek araya girdi yeniden Arezzo Piskoposu, kafayla konuşuyorsunuz... Algı yoksa, düşünce de yoktur, görüntü de yok. Hatta aynı şekilde, şiir, konuşan resimdir... Resimse, Senyör Orazio, sessiz şiirdir.”
― Alexandra Lapierre, quote from Artemisia

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