Courtney

“I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long.   They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.   So they show their relations to me and I accept them, They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.   I wonder where they get those tokens, Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?   Myself moving forward then and now and forever, Gathering and showing more always and with velocity, Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them, Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers, Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly terms.   A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses, Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears, Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground, Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving.   His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him, His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return.   I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion, Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them? Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“The first time I went to an Indian restaurant in Canada, I used my fingers. The waiter looked at me critically and said, "Fresh off the boat are you?" I blanched. My fingers which had seconds before had been taste buds savoring the food a little ahead of my mouth, became dirty under his gaze. They froze like criminals caught in the act. I didn't dare lick them. I wiped them guiltily on my napkin. He had no idea how deeply those words wounded me. They were like nails being driven into my flesh.”
― Yann Martel

“My message, the message from all of us in the animal welfare community is simple: Take a picture of your Benny, put it in an imaginary locket. Then, with the love you feel for your Benny, hold it in your hands so tightly that you become an alchemist; the love you feel for one becomes the love your feel for all. It is all one.”
― Jackson Galaxy, Cat Daddy: What the World's Most Incorrigible Cat Taught Me About Life, Love, and Coming Clean

“Even through the dulling effects of the pill, he wanted to be rid of his itching brain, his ignited skin, the flesh beneath, to in some way become so ethereal and Unbound to the earth that he could unsee, disavow, disavow”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Authority