Peter Allison · 246 pages
Rating: (6.9K votes)
“Like every other guide or wildlife lover who is eventually eaten or trampled, I felt that I had a bond with this herd that would make me safe with them. I wanted to try my luck again.”
― Peter Allison, quote from Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales Of A Botswana Safari Guide
“She asked another question: "What does it matter if the rhinos die out? Is it really important that they are saved?"
This would normally have riled me... but I had come to think of her as Dr. Spock from Star Trek - an emotionless, purely logical creature, at least with regards to her feelings for animals. Like Spock, though, I knew there were one or two things that stirred her, so I gave an honest reply.
"... to be honest, it doesn't matter. No economy will suffer, nobody will go hungry, no diseases will be spawned. Yet there will never be a way to place a value on what we have lost. Future children will see rhinos only in books and wonder how we let them go so easily. It would be like lighting a fire in the Louvre and watching the Mona Lisa burn. Most people would think 'What a pity' and leave it at that while only a few wept”
― Peter Allison, quote from Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales Of A Botswana Safari Guide
“Bleary-eyed one morning, with caffeine still missing from my system, I fumbled my way along the dusty path to the guest tents, calling out ‘Good morning!’ in as cheery a voice as the hour would allow (it was barely after five o’clock, and the sun had only just cracked the horizon). I heard a rhythmic thumping, getting rapidly louder, and I turned to find 1,600 pounds of pissed-off cow bearing down on me. Clearly it disagreed with my assessment of the morning.”
― Peter Allison, quote from Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales Of A Botswana Safari Guide
“This tree, though, had not been fed on, so it was apparent that the culprit was a bull (elephant) who was filled with testosterone but no outlet for it, so he pushed over trees. It's a great release for a bull and a way of showing his strength after a female has rejected him. If human males had the same ability, global deforestation would be complete by now.”
― Peter Allison, quote from Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales Of A Botswana Safari Guide
“It was the most ludicrous sound I had ever heard. The strangled gargling sounded like a goat that was having an unpleasant sexual encounter.”
― Peter Allison, quote from Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales Of A Botswana Safari Guide
“Peter Allison is a safari guide who has spent much of the last twelve years leading wildlife-viewing and ecotourism trips in Africa, mostly Botswana. His love of animals led him to train as a safari guide in the early 1990s and soon thereafter he was hired by southern Africa’s largest operator to train all of their safari experts. Safaris he has led have been featured in magazines such as Vogue and Condé Nast Traveler. He has assisted National Geographic photographers and appeared on television shows such as Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures. Peter is also active with the Athena Foundation, a nonprofit conservation group. He is on the board of the Athena Foundation’s youth program, whose mission is to inspire young people to develop their interest in conservation. Originally born and raised in Sydney, Australia, he currently divides his time between Australia, California, and Botswana.”
― Peter Allison, quote from Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales Of A Botswana Safari Guide
Peter Allison
Born place: Australia
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“As George removed the cork and began very slowly to pour the thick brown stuff into the spoon,”
― Roald Dahl, quote from George's Marvellous Medicine
“The more you think about things, the weirder they seem. Take this milk. Why do we drink COW milk?? Who was the guy who first looked at a cow and said, 'I think I'll drink whatever comes out of these things when I squeeze 'em!'?”
― Bill Watterson, quote from The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes
“What, I wondered, did he mean by “society”? The plural of human beings? Where was the substance of this thing called “society”? I had spent my whole life thinkng that society must certainly be something powerful, harsh and severe, but to hear Horiki talk made the words “Don’t you mean yourself?” come to the tip of my tongue. But I held the words back, reluctant to anger him.
‘Society won’t stand for it.’
‘It’s not society. You’re the one who won’t stand for it - right?’
‘If you do such a thing society will make you suffer for it’
‘It’s not society. It’s you, isn’t it?’
‘Before you know it, you’ll be ostracized by society.’
‘It’s not society. You’re going to do the ostracizing, aren’t you?’
Words, words of every kind went flitting through my head. “Know thy particular fearsomeness, thy knavery, cunning and witchcraft!” What I said, however, as I wiped the perspiration from my face with a handkerchief was merely, “You’ve put me in a cold sweat!” I smiled.
From then on, however, I came to hold, almost as a philosophical conviction, the belief: What is society but an individual?”
― Osamu Dazai, quote from No Longer Human
“Grief heals ... unshed tears fester like a canker in the soul.”
― Jacqueline Carey, quote from Kushiel's Chosen
“You're right,' said the corporal. 'It serves editors like that right. They only stir the people up. Last year when I was still only a lance-corporal I had an editor under me and he called me nothing else but a disaster for the army, but when I taught him unarmed drill and he sweated, he always used to say: "Please respect the human being in me." But I gave him hell for his human being when the order was "flat down" and there were a lot of puddles in the barracks courtyard.
...
As I said, he was always on about his "human being" and nothing else. Once when he was reflecting over a puddle in which he had to plop down when he did his "flat down" I said to him: "When you're always talking about a human being even when you're in the mud remember that man was created out of the dust of the ground and it must have been O.K. for him.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, quote from The Good Soldier Švejk
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