Eliot Schrefer Quotes

Superstition, she said. Soup with a bonobo finger in it is supposed to make a pregnant woman give birth to a strong baby. Putting another finger in the bathwater keeps the baby strong. "I hope the stupid polio", I said, and surprised myself by even sort of meaning it. I kissed the top of the bonobo's head. I imagined him in his crate, crying against the bars, someone lifting him out only to chop off a finger. Plunging him back into the crate, then pulling him out a few days later to take another ...

Since the bigger gorillas leave chimps only a fraction of the quantity of food bonobos get, each chimp must fight ferociously to survive, including killing other chimpanzees

You have to learn when to ignore suffering so that you're strong enough to fight it when the time is right.

General Gar, the leader of the Conquerors, was waiting for them. The Devourer.

Saving myself would mean destroying him.

Humans are animals, too, you know.

Luckily Rollan was more unflappable. He stepped forward, bravely brandishing his long dagger, however pathetic it looked compared to the teeth of Cabaro.

The smell coming off my flesh had gone from simple stinkiness to something weird and almost appetizing, close to sour-cream-and-onion potato chips.

My feet hurt, I was light-headed with stress and bad meals, and the idea of perhaps eating real food and sitting in a chair
or even sleeping in a bed!
sounded like bliss.

As I finished the bed, thinking it looked surprisingly comfortable, a terrible black feeling came over me and I shuddered, aching at the sudden loneliness. I missed my new family.

I knew at least Banalia was dead; that had happened right in front of my eyes. They would either eat her now or smoke her body to sell the meat. It made my stomach turn
the DNA in that meat was almost 99 percent the same as human DNA; it was nearly cannibalism. But the men were hungry.

But it had always been my mom's philosophy that the way we treat animals goes hand in hand with the way we treat people, and so she would dedicate her life to stopping men like this one, bushmeat traders hoping for sale

... the primary trait of young adult literature is that the author's emphasis is on plot and character and not on his own brilliance. And because few people talk about whether a young adult work is commercial or literary; the two are still in sync, and everyone's benefitting.

Concrete can rot. It turns green and black before crumbling away.
Maybe only people from Congo know that.

He did an excellent Tarik impression, bringing his voice low and softly accenting the ends of his sentences. Scrubber, his raccoon, flailed and squirmed on the ground, pretending to be Monte himself. It was a light moment in the

He's extremely dehydrated and we'll need to get fluids into him as soon as possible if he's to have a hope of surviving

A little self-hatred keeps a person interesting