The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
John Vaillant
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Our listeners asked us: "What is chaos?" We're answering: "We do not comment on economic policy.”
“The one certainty in tiger tracks is: follow them long enough and you will eventually arrive at a tiger, unless the tiger arrives at you first.”
“The impact of an attacking tiger can be compared to that of a piano falling on you from a second story window. But unlike the piano, the tiger is designed to do this, and the impact is only the beginning.”
“The most terrifying and important test for a human being is to be in absolute isolation,” he explained. “A human being is a very social creature, and ninety percent of what he does is done only because other people are watching. Alone, with no witnesses, he starts to learn about himself—who is he really?”
“To say a tiger is an "outside" animal is an understatement that is best appreciated when a tiger is inside.”
“Successful hunting, it could be said, is an act of terminal empathy: the kill depends on how successfully a hunter inserts himself into the umwelt of his prey--even to the point of disguising himself as that animal and mimicking its behavior.”
“(..)Fate has always been a potent force in Russia, where, for generations, citizens have had little control over their own destinies. Fate can be a bitch, but, as Zaitsev, Dvornik, and Onofrecuk had discovered, it can also be a tiger.”
“What other creature, besides the lion, the tiger, and the whale, can answer Creation in its own language?”
“Since well before the Kung's engine noise first penetrated the forest, a conversation of sorts has been unfolding in this lonesome hollow. It is not a language like Russian or Chinese but it is a language nonetheless, and it is older than the forest. The crows speak it; the dog speaks it; the tiger speaks it, and so do the men--some more fluently than others.”
“In the 1970s, after the Damansky Island clashes, a joke began circulating: 'Optimists study English; pessimists study Chinese; and realists learn to use a Kalashnikov.”
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Book Keywords:
tigers, russia, survival, hunting, economic-policy, empathy, fate, hunter, forest, radio-call-in-shows, poaching, humor, chaos, wilderness, nature, tiger
