“Elephants don’t know anything about the world of ants; the peaks of mountains are oblivious of what is happening on the plains!”

“There are four kinds of people in this world: •those who make things happen•those who watch things happen•those who wonder what happened•those who don’t know that anything happened!I knew from a very early age that I wanted to be first on that list.”

“The world rests upon a turtle, which itself stands on the back of an elephant!”Alek tried not to laugh. “Then what does the elephant stand on, madam?”“Don’t try to be clever, young man.” She narrowed her eyes. “It’s elephants all the way down!”

“Of all African animals, the elephant is the most difficult for man to live with, yet its passing - if this must come - seems the most tragic of all. I can watch elephants (and elephants alone) for hours at a time, for sooner or later the elephant will do something very strange such as mow grass with its toenails or draw the tusks from the rotted carcass of another elephant and carry them off into the bush. There is mystery behind that masked gray visage, and ancient life force, delicate and mighty, awesome and enchanted, commanding the silence ordinarily reserved for mountain peaks, great fires, and the sea.”

“Experience, as we know, is deceptive: one judges the world through the prism of what has happened to oneself and considers this a just and reasonable approach, when in fact it is quite obviously the perfect tactic for never learning anything about anything.”

“What beauty could be your life’s mountain peak which you could climb all the way up?”