“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.”

“But ignoring Gray Porter is like ignoring an elephant in a tutu. A really hot elephant—in a very manly tutu.”

“Ignoring Gray Porter is like ignoring an elephant in a tut. A really hot elephant in a tutu... a very manly tutu." -Jess”

“The secret of the mountain is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no "meaning," they are meaning; the mountains are. The sun is round. I ring with life, and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, there is a ringing that we share. I understand all this, not in my mind but in my heart, knowing how meaningless it is to try to capture what cannot be expressed, knowing that mere words will remain when I read it all again, another day.”

“I grab my bag and open the door, trying to ignore him. But ignoring Gray Porter is like ignoring an elephant in a tutu. A really hot elephant-in a very manly tutu.”

“Ella is nervous,” the harpy muttered from her perch on the railing. “The elephant. The elephant is watching Ella.”

“A novelist is an elephant, but an elephant who must pretend to forget.”