“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.”

“What other creature, besides the lion, the tiger, and the whale, can answer Creation in its own language?”

“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.”

“(..)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.”

“To say a tiger is an "outside" animal is an understatement that is best appreciated when a tiger is inside.”

“By the time these words are read, the centuries-old cedar, hemlock, and balsm of the cutblock known as Leah Block 2 will be a distant memory, long since processed into siding, two-by-fours, perhaps even the paper that has been recycled into the pages of this book.”