“We all thought Richmond, protected as it was by our splendid fortifications and defended by our army of veterans, could not be taken. Yet Grant turned his face to our Capital, and never turned it away until we had surrendered. Now, I have carefully searched the military records of both ancient and modern history, and have never found Grant's superior as a general. I doubt that his superior can be found in all history.”

“Farewell, we must part; we have turned from the landOf our cold-hearted brother, with tyrannous hand,Who assumed all our rights as a favor to grant,And whose smile ever covered the sting of a taunt;Who breathed on the fame he was bound to defend—Still the craftiest foe, ’neath the guise of a friend;Who believed that our bosoms would bleed at a touch,Yet could never believe he could goad them too much;Whose conscience affects to be seared with our sin,Yet is plastic to take all its benefits in;The mote in our eye so enormous has grown,That he never perceives there’s a beam in his own.”

“If we turn our heads and look away and hope that it will all disappear then they will - all of them, an entire generation of people. And we will have only history left to judge us.”

“And yet I wasn't sure what his weakness was. We all do that as we get to know someone. Like a tabloid editor, we search for both greatness and weakness, jotting down notes in our heads for future exploitation. We are never comfortable with those who have no visible flaw.”

“The word "virtue" was once found in so many ancient quotes, yet now seems lost in our modern lives.”

“Taken together, the narratives of how the animals ended up at Lowry Park revealed as much about Homo sapiens as they revealed about the animals themselves. The precise details—how and where each was born, how they were separated from their mothers and taken into custody, all they had witnessed and experienced on their way to becoming the property of this particular zoo—could have filled an encyclopedia with insights into human behavior and psychology, human geopolitics and history and commerce. Lowry Park’s very existence declared our presumption of supremacy, the ancient belief that we have been granted dominion over other creatures and have the right to do with them as we please. The zoo was a living catalogue of our fears and obsessions, the ways we see animals and see ourselves, all the things we prefer not to see at all. Every corner of the grounds revealed our appetite for amusement and diversion, no matter what the cost. Our longing for the wildness we have lost inside ourselves. Our instinct to both exalt nature and control it. Our deepest wish to love and protect other species even as we scorch their forests and poison their rivers and shove them toward oblivion.All of it was on display in the garden of captives.”