Carmen

“Before, they had laughed at me, despising me for my ignorance and dullness; now, they hated me for my knowledge and understanding. Why? What in God's name did they want of me?”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life.”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

“Of all the lessons I’ve learned in my months with Mabel this is the greatest of all: that there is a world of things out there – rocks and trees and stones and grass and all the things that crawl and run and fly. They are all things in themselves, but we make them sensible to us by giving them meanings that shore up our own views of the world. In my time with Mabel I’ve learned how you feel more human once you have known, even in your imagination, what it is like to be not. And I have learned, too, the danger that comes in mistaking the wildness we give a thing for the wildness that animates it. Goshawks are things of death and blood and gore, but they are not excuses for atrocities. Their inhumanity is to be treasured because what they do has nothing to do with us at all.”
― Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

“Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial