The Tiger's Wife Quotes
"We’re in a war. The story of this war—dates, names, who started it, why—that belongs to everyone. But something like this—this is yours. It belongs only to you. And me. Only to us."
"You must understand, this is one of those moments. One of those moments you keep to yourself."
"Why do I have to be the adult? Why do I have to point out when he does something insane?"
"It’s the middle of the night, not a soul anywhere. In this city, at this time. Not a dog in the gutter. Empty. Except for this elephant—and you’re going to tell your idiot friends about it?"
"I would like to be able to say that I’m sorry. Well, I am."
"Look around. Think for a moment. It’s the middle of the night, not a soul anywhere... Empty. Except for this elephant—and you’re going to tell your idiot friends about it? Why? Do you think they’ll understand it?"
"This is how it stands: a man has died, and there has been a funeral. At the funeral, the man, who is called Gavo, sits up in his coffin and asks for water."
"It is not so serious," he says, smiling. He reaches around and fingers the bullets in the back of his head, and the whole time he is smiling at me rather like a cow.
"I would be insane to stay here," he says to me in an exasperated voice. "Any minute now your Hungarian is going to go outside and call in the others, and then there will be business with garlic and stakes and things."
"They behave very strangely," he says. "They are suddenly filled with life. Suddenly they want to fight for things, ask questions."
"The devil I tell you! The devil has come for us all!"
"That's what the tiger looks like." And he pointed to the mountain above the smoking chimneys of the village.
"Pigs' feet. Delicious. They're a lot like children's feet, actually."
"It is the sound of shuffling movement, and then, all of a sudden, a voice from the coffin, a frank, polite, slightly muffled voice that says: 'Water.'"
"I have never seen so strange a thing as a tiger in a wheat field," he wrote, even though, today, I pulled a woman's black breasts and stomach out of the pond at the Convent of Sveta Maria.
"The devil has come to Galina, and call the priest quick."
"I’m not going to the hospital, Doctor," he says, flatly. "My name is Gavran Gailé, and I am a deathless man."
"There was a lot less light than he had initially supposed."
"The smell was wonderful, and he suddenly felt hungry."
"It seemed to my grandfather that the sound was still in the air."
"The musket had made its way to the village through a series of exchanges."
"The blacksmith sat by the fire and watched his wife take the gun down."
"It was Christmas Eve, and the entire village had turned out to watch the hunters depart."
"He hated those other men, and the dogs too, because he believed the tiger would have spared him."
"Climbing up Galina, knee-deep in snow, the blacksmith was convinced that this was the end for him."
"The blacksmith felt his organs clench as the first of the dogs reached the tiger."
"No one would ever guess that the gun had misfired."
"The lights of Zvoćana were still bright on the water across the bay."
"Fear and pain are immediate, and when they’re gone, we’re left with the concept, but not the true memory."
"Part of me knows that there was tremendous pain... but what I really remember is a sort of projected image of myself."
"You are going to see what it is like, someday soon, being in a room full of the dying."
"Everything about that first time surprised him."
"She was everywhere... and somehow the two of them understood each other without exchanging a single sound."
"I seen her today... she’s all alone, nobody bothering her, no one but the tiger."
"That girl’s got a belly out to here, are you blind?"
"I hope she knows well enough to keep that child in the house, and not bring it out here for my children to look at."
"He always began and ended with a drawing of Shere Khan, because even his feeble, flat-nosed cat with the stripes that looked like scars made her smile."
"That doesn’t matter. Point is, that tiger come all the way up to the door of Luka’s house, and then he get up and take off his skin."
"But I haven’t seen Shere Khan in the village—have you?"
"That man doesn’t know, that apothecary. He’s not from around here."
"Imagine that, feeding that girl, when the rest of us have no meat."
"There was a hot stillness over the sea, and it had crawled onto the land and stilled everything, even the vineyard."
"Bombs were falling, and the entire City shut down."
"For twenty years, we had watched the four-o'clock showing of 'Allo 'Allo! together."
"The tiger had begun to eat his own legs, first one and then the other, systematically, flesh to bone."
"When your fight has purpose—to free you from something, to interfere on the behalf of an innocent—it has a hope of finality."
"The fight is about unraveling—when it is about your name, the places to which your blood is anchored, the attachment of your name to some landmark or event—there is nothing but hate."
"When the fight is endless, and comes in waves and waves, but always retains its capacity to surprise those who hope against it."
"All the suffering that would have come from knowing comes after you are gone, and you are not a part of it."
"Suddenness. You do not prepare, you do not explain, you do not apologize. Suddenly, you go."
"In the end, all you want is someone to long for you when it comes time to put you in the ground."
"Sacred earth, they say. Leave something for your dead here and it will reach them."
"Maybe it’s enough to say he enjoyed the sensation of her hand between his eyes."
"Isn’t it strange, they might have said, here is a kind of love story, and then moved on to some other point of gossip."