The jungle Quotes

“What was it like then to witness the transformation wrought by this construction? A geometric idea of precision suddenly imposed on a landscape, lived on and in for centuries. The land itself like a body submitted to military discipline. Or like a mind, tutored along certain acceptable pathways, so that finally all that lies outside certain avenues of thought begins to assume an air of unreality.The land of course is still there. Only now it has receded into the background. It is what you see in your peripheral vision as you speed down the highway. The complexity of it, the intricate presence of it, has been reduced now to a single word, jungle. If once you breathed its breath or slept surrounded by its dark or wakened with its light, you no longer remember. You tell yourself life has improved. The jungle is in the past. To enter it is to stray from the path, or to be pulled down into some unknown depth. It is an exotic place, intriguing but also unpredictable, uncontrolled, threatening the well-paved order of existence.”

“When gorillas smell danger, they run around and call out to the rest of the primates in the jungle to warn them something evil is coming. And when one of their own dies, they mourn for days while beating themselves up in sadness for failing to save that gorilla, even if the cause of death was natural. And when one colony is mourning, their chilling echoes migrate to other colonies — and those neighbors, even if they are territorial rivals, will also grieve with them. When faced with a common danger, rivals turn into allies. And when faced with death, the loss of just one gorilla becomes the loss of the entire jungle.”

“Things is very primitive in the jungle - no place to shit, sleep on the ground like an animal, eat out of cans, no place to take a bath or nothing, clothes is all rotting off.”

“I just have to make it to the Tuichi' I mumbled to myself, 'I just have to make it to the Tuichi'.Alone, deep in the jungle, so small and insignificant, pitted against nature, still I sensed someone was watching me. Or watching over me.Someone could see me, someone was providing for me”

“I think one of the coolest things you can do is disappear for a while, because it gives you the chance to re-emerge. To sort of pounce out of the jungle.”

“The situation was different in the jungle. Every inch of ground had to be earned, and was done so through much exertion with the blade.”

“The jungle is alive. It’s dangerous as a living nightmare and brimful of hostility.”

“Spend sixteen weeks in the jungle and you being to question your own sanity, especially when you are the one goading everyone else ahead.”

“A lion does not become king of the jungle hunting mice.”