Dane Huckelbridge > Quotes

“He smiles and shakes his head, a smile that’s bewildered and content and still pursed by that same tender sadness that visited him by the arch, that trails him as doggedly as his gratitude and his guilt … the wonder of it all, the unknowable mystery, to serve as fleshy custodian to such a fragile flame.”
― Dane Huckelbridge, Castle of Water

“Surely an unremarkable moment for most, but for the man, it is a parting tinged with a tender sadness—he has noticed over the years that even the briefest and most incidental interactions can, with the appreciation of time, take on far richer shades of meaning. It is a realization for which he is eternally grateful.”
― Dane Huckelbridge, Castle of Water

“And so on and so on goes the cardiac beat in this polka called life.”
― Dane Huckelbridge, Castle of Water

“And so it came to pass that two utterly disparate lives happened to overlap ... bound together on an uninhabited island some 2,359 miles from Hawaii, 4,622 miles from Chile, and 533 miles from the nearest living soul.
Crap, as Barry liked to say.
Putain de merde, as Sophie was known to exclaim.”
― Dane Huckelbridge, Castle of Water

“the house wine of the South, bourbon whiskey.”
― Dane Huckelbridge, Bourbon: A History of the American Spirit

“this brazen Panthera tigris tigris hunted Homo sapiens on a regular basis across the rugged borderlands of Nepal and India in the early 1900s with shocking impunity and an almost supernatural efficacy. In the end, its reported tally added up to 436 human souls—more, some believe, than any other individual killer, man or animal, before or since.”
― Dane Huckelbridge, No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Animal in History – A Gripping Epic of Jim Corbett, Bengal Tigers, and the Journey from Hunter to Conservationist

“That when it comes to truly behaving as a beast — to killing wantonly and without reason — it is our kind, not theirs, that is the fiercer of the two”
― Dane Huckelbridge, No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Man-Eater in History

“Mr. Jacob Spears, a pioneer and distiller from the town of Paris, Kentucky, who is said to have first used the name “bourbon” to describe the whiskey he produced there in the 1790s.”
― Dane Huckelbridge, Bourbon: A History of the American Spirit

“the Scots-Irish Kentuckian never forgot how to make the liquor of his homeland(s), and he went to great lengths to ensure he never ran out of corn.”
― Dane Huckelbridge, Bourbon: A History of the American Spirit

“For destructive purposes—well, when it came to warfare, there wasn’t much a mounted elephant couldn’t do. The siege engines of the day, a fully armored elephant with spikes mounted on its tusks and a fortified howdah tower on its back could also function like a Sherman tank. Able to achieve speeds of up to twenty miles per hour, and covered with a hide that could absorb dozens of arrows and musket shots alike, a trained war elephant was more than capable of breaking even the most stubborn of enemy lines, trampling infantry and skewering cavalry horses on its bladed tusks. They provided an elevated vantage point for commanders, and a well-angled shot for mounted archers and snipers. A full complement of military elephants was essential for”
― Dane Huckelbridge, No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Animal in History – A Gripping Epic of Jim Corbett, Bengal Tigers, and the Journey from Hunter to Conservationist

“Bourbon just isn’t bourbon without some quality time spent in a charred-oak barrel. The aging process lends whiskey much of its distinctive color and taste.”
― Dane Huckelbridge, Bourbon: A History of the American Spirit

“With retinas made up primarily of light-sensitive rod receptors, and a reflective tapetum lucidum layer right behind them, the tiger has night vision some six times more acute than that of a human. And coupled with those powerful eyes is an equally impressive pair of ears. Built on a swivel, they can readily hone in on a source like radar dishes, and have an impressive range of between .2 kHz and 65 kHz—considerably broader than the range for humans, whose extends only up to 20 kHz—geared toward picking up noises as faint as the swallowing of saliva and the whistling of breath through nostrils. In addition to vision and hearing worthy of a superhero, tigers also have five different types of whiskers covering their body, all of which are constantly absorbing sensory information and empowering them to navigate through the darkest and densest of underbrush.”
― Dane Huckelbridge, No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Animal in History – A Gripping Epic of Jim Corbett, Bengal Tigers, and the Journey from Hunter to Conservationist