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
See more on GoodReads
“Maybe we judge people too much by their looks because it's easier than seeing what's really important.”
― Alex Flinn, quote from Beastly
“Let's worry about fixing the problem instead of the blame.”
― Brandon Mull, quote from Fablehaven
“I'm an accident. I'm a lie. And my life depends on maintaining the illusion.”
― Victoria Aveyard, quote from Red Queen
“That night he dreamt of horses in a field on a high plain where the spring rains had brought up the grass and the wildflowers out of the ground and the flowers ran all blue and yellow far as the eye could see and in the dream he was among the horses running and in the dream he himself could run with the horses and they coursed the young mares and fillies over the plain where their rich bay and their rich chestnut colors shone in the sun and the young colts ran with their dams and trampled down the flowers in a haze of pollen that hung in the sun like powdered gold and they ran he and the horses out along the high mesas where the ground resounded under their running hooves and they flowed and changed and ran and their manes and tails blew off of them like spume and there was nothing else at all in that high world and they moved all of them in a resonance that was like a music among them and they were none of them afraid neither horse nor colt nor mare and they ran in that resonance which is the world itself and which cannot be spoken but only praised.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from All the Pretty Horses
“You know me better than anyone, and you're my best friend. I don't think there's anything you could say to me that would lead me to believe that you're doing it just to hurt me. If there's one thing I've come to know about you, it's that you're not even capable of something like that. Why do you think I like spending time with you so much? Because you're a good guy. A nice guy.”
― Nicholas Sparks, quote from The Guardian
Three Weeks With My...
Orphan Train
The Alloy of Law
The Long Winter
Ruin and Rising
HawksongBookQuoters 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.
