Gerald Durrell Quotes

Lying spread-eagled in the silky water, gazing into the sky, only moving
my hands and feet slightly to keep afloat, I was looking at the Milky Way
stretched like a chiffon scarf across the sky and wondering how many stars it
contained. I could hear the voices of the others, laughing and talking on the
beach, echoing over the water

We all travelled light, taking with us only what we considered to be the bare essentials of life. When we opened our luggage for Customs inspection, the contents of our bags were a fair indication of character and interests. Thus Margo's luggage contained a multitude of diaphanous garments, three books on slimming, and a regiment of small bottles each containing some elixir guaranteed to cure acne. Leslie's cases held a couple of roll-top pullovers and a pair of trousers which were wrapped around two revolvers, an air-pistol, a book called Be Your Own Gunsmith, and a large bottle of oil that leaked. Larry was accompanied by two trunks of books and a brief case containing his clothes. Mother's luggage was sensibly divided between clothes and various volumes on cooking and gardening. I travelled with only those items that I thought necessary to relieve the tedium of a long journey: four books on natural history, a butterfly net, a dog, and a jam jar full of caterpillars all in imminent danger of turning into chrysalids. Thus, by our standards, fully equipped, we left the clammy shores of England.

The phosphorescence was particularly good that night. By plunging your hand into the water and dragging it along you could draw a wide golden-green ribbon of cold fire across the sea, and when you dived as you hit the surface it seemed as though you had plunged into a frosty furnace of glinting light. When we were tired we waded out of the sea, the water running off our bodies so that we seemed to be on fire, and lay on the sand to eat. Then, as the wine was opened at the end of the meal, as if by arrangement, a few fireflies appeared in the olives behind us – a sort of overture to the show.

First of all there were just two or three green specks, sliding smoothly through the trees, winking regularly. But gradually more and more appeared, until parts of the olive-grove were lit with a weird green glow. Never had we seen so many fireflies congregated in one spot; they flicked through the trees in swarms, they crawled on the grass, the bushes and olive-trunks, they drifted in swarms over our heads and landed on the rocks, like green embers. Glittering streams of them flew out over the bay, swirling over the water, and then, right on cue, the porpoises appeared, swimming in line into the bay, rocking rhythmically through the water, their backs as if painted with phosphorus. In the centre of the bay they swam around, diving and rolling, occasionally leaping high in the air and falling back into a conflagration of light. With the fireflies above and illuminated porpoises below it was a fantastic sight. We could even see the luminous trails beneath the surface where the porpoises swam in fiery patterns across the sandy bottom, and when they leapt high in the air drops of emerald glowing water flicked from them, and you could not tell if it was phosphorescence or fireflies you were looking at. For an hour or so we watched this pageant, and then slowly the fireflies drifted back inland farther down the coast. Then the porpoises lined up and sped out to sea, leaving a flamin

...they say that when you get old, as I am, your body slows down. I don't believe it. No, I think that is quite wrong. I have a theory that you do not slow down at all, but that life slows down for you. You understand me? Everything becomes languid, as it were, and you can notice so much more when things sre in slow motion. The things you see! The extraordinary things that happen all around you, that you never even suspected before. It really is a delightful adventure, quite delightful.

Sometimes the fresh load of guests would turn up before we had got rid of the previous group, and the chaos was indescribable; the house and garden would be dotted with poets, authors, artists, and playwrights arguing, painting, drinking, typing, and composing. Far from being the ordinary, charming people that Larry had promised, they all turned out to be the most extraordinary eccentrics who were so highbrow that they had difficulty in understanding one another.

A sparrow can be as interesting as a bird of paradise, the behaviour of a mouse as interesting as that of a tiger. Our planet is beautifully intricate, brimming over with enigmas to be solved and riddles to be unravelled. Many people think that conservation is just about saving fluffy animals – what they don’t realise is that we’re trying to prevent the human race from committing suicide … We have declared war on the biological world, the world that supports us … At the moment the human race is in the position of a man sawing off the tree branch he is sitting on. Look at it this way. Anyone who has got any pleasure at all from living should try to put something back. Life is like a superlative meal and the world is the maître d'hôtel. What I am doing is the equivalent of leaving a reasonable tip. … I'm glad to be giving something back because I've been so extraordinarily lucky and had such great pleasure from it.

Spiro was pointing at a gentle curve of hillside that rose from the glittering sea. The hill and the valleys around it were an eiderdown of olive groves that shone with a fishlike gleam where the breeze touched the leaves. Halfway up the slope, guarded by a group of tall, slim cypress trees, nestled a small strawberry-pink villa, like some exotic fruit lying in the greenery. The cypress trees undulated gently in the breeze, as if they were busily painting the sky a still brighter blue for our arrival.

Here Sally’s hooves crushed the herbs underfoot and the warm air became redolent with the scent of sage and thyme.

Until we consider animal life to be worthy of the consideration and reverence we bestow upon old books and pictures and historic monuments, there will always be the animal refugee living a precarious life on the edge of extermination, dependent for existence on the charity of a few human beings.

How I envy you your ability to be inarticulate in the face of Fate.

I believe that all children should be surrounded by books and animals.

La chiave per poter prevenire questa terribile razzia di creature selvatiche, animali e vegetali, è l'informazione. E' necessario far capire alla gente che le risorse naturali sono infinite e rinnovabili solo nella misura in cui vengono usate con criterio e parsimonia. Insegnando che il patrimonio naturale è qualcosa di cui andare fieri, da proteggere e non da sacrificare a egoistici ed effimeri scopi di lucro, si pongono le basi per un saggio utilizzo della natura a vantaggio di tutto il mondo.

That’s the trouble round here,’ snapped Larry. ‘Nobody counts! And before you know where you are you’re knee deep in animals. It’s like the bloody creation all over again, only worse. One owl turns into a battalion before you know where you are; sex-mad pigeons defying Marie Stopes in every room of the house; the place is so full of birds it’s like a bloody poulterer’s shop, to say nothing of snakes and toads and enough small fry to keep Macbeth’s witches in provender for years. And on top of all that you go and get twelve more dogs. It’s a perfect example of the streak of lunacy that runs in this family.’

‘Nonsense, Larry, you do exaggerate,’ said Mother. ‘Such a lot of fuss over a few puppies.’

‘You call eleven puppies a few? The place will look like the Greek branch of Crufts’ Dog Show and they’ll probably all turn out to be bitches and come into season simultaneously. Life will deteriorate into one long canine sexual orgy.

The family were arranged on the veranda under the grapevine, each occupied with his or her own affairs. Mother was knitting, counting the stitches audibly at intervals to herself and saying ‘damn’ periodically when she went wrong. Leslie was squatting on the flag-stones, carefully weighing gunpowder and little piles of silver shot as he filled shiny red cartridge cases. Larry was reading a massive tome and occasionally glancing irritably at Margo, who was clattering away at her machine, making some diaphanous garment, and singing, off key, the only line she knew of her favourite song of the moment.
‘She wore her little jacket of blue,’ she warbled. ‘She wore her little jacket of blue, She wore her little jacket of blue, She wore her little jacket of blue.’
‘The only remarkable thing about your singing is your tenacity,’ said Larry. ‘Anybody else, faced with the fact that they could not carry a tune and couldn’t remember the simplest lyric, would have given up, defeated, a long time ago.’
He threw his cigarette butt down on the flag-stones and this produced a roar of rage from Leslie.
‘Watch the gunpowder,’ he shouted.
‘Leslie dear,’ said Mother, ‘I do wish you wouldn’t shout like that, you’ve made me lose count.’
I produced my hedgehogs proudly and showed them to Mother

Are we having a plague of owls?’ Larry inquired. ‘Are they attacking the larder and zooming out with bunches of chops in their talons?