"[On watching a Komodo dragon eat a live chicken:] The three of us were sitting ashen-faced as if we had just witnessed a foul and malignant murder. At least if we had been watching a murder, the murderer wouldn’t have been looking us impassively in the eye as he did it. Maybe it was the feeling of cold, unflinching arrogance that so disturbed us. But whatever malign emotions we tried to pin onto the lizard, we knew that they weren’t the lizard’s emotions at all, only ours. The lizard was simply going about its lizardly business in a simple, straightforward lizardly way. It didn’t know anything about the horror, the guilt, the shame, the ugliness that we, uniquely guilty and ashamed animals, were trying to foist on it. So we got it all straight back at us, as if reflected in the mirror of its single unwavering and disinterested eye."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
p. 35
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Last Chance to See
71 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Last Chance to See →
Related Quotes
"We tried serenely to point out that it actually said “Confirmed” on our tickets, but he explained that “Confirmed” di…"
"[Mark Carwardine]’s role, essentially, was to be the one who knew what he was talking about. My role, and one for whi…"
"The aye-aye is a nocturnal lemur. It is a very strange-looking creature that seems to have been assembled from bits o…"
"Antananarivo is pronounced Tananarive, and for much of this century has been spelt that way as well. When the French …"
"It [seeing an aye-aye] was the kind of moment about which it is hard not to feel completely dizzy. Why? Because, I re…"
"I’m always very sympathetic when I hear people complaining that all they ever get on television or radio chat shows i…"
"There is in Melbourne a man who probably knows more about poisonous snakes than anyone else on earth. His name is Dr.…"
"“The most poisonous spider is the Sydney funnel web. We get about five hundred people a year bitten by spiders. A lot…"
"“So what do we do if we get bitten by something deadly, then?” I asked. He blinked at me as if I were stupid. “Well, …"
"The great thing about being the only species that makes a distinction between right and wrong is that we can make up …"