The Tiger Quotes

“The one certainty in tiger tracks is: follow them long enough and you will eventually arrive at a tiger, unless the tiger arrives at you first.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“The impact of an attacking tiger can be compared to that of a piano falling on you from a second story window. But unlike the piano, the tiger is designed to do this, and the impact is only the beginning.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“Our listeners asked us:
"What is chaos?"
We're answering:
"We do not comment on economic policy.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“The most terrifying and important test for a human being is to be in absolute isolation,” he explained. “A human being is a very social creature, and ninety percent of what he does is done only because other people are watching. Alone, with no witnesses, he starts to learn about himself—who is he really?”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“(..)Fate has al­ways been a po­tent force in Rus­sia, where, for gen­er­ations, cit­izens have had lit­tle con­trol over their own des­tinies. Fate can be a bitch, but, as Za­it­sev, Dvornik, and Onofre­cuk had dis­cov­ered, it can al­so be a tiger.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“To say a tiger is an "outside" animal is an understatement that is best appreciated when a tiger is inside.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“In the 1970s, after the Damansky Island clashes, a joke began circulating: 'Optimists study English; pessimists study Chinese; and realists learn to use a Kalashnikov.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“Successful hunting, it could be said, is an act of terminal empathy: the kill depends on how successfully a hunter inserts himself into the umwelt of his prey--even to the point of disguising himself as that animal and mimicking its behavior.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“He realised that in a town a man cannot live as he wishes, but as other people wish.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“Fear is not a sin in the taiga, but cow­ardice is [..].”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“Since well before the Kung's engine noise first penetrated the forest, a conversation of sorts has been unfolding in this lonesome hollow. It is not a language like Russian or Chinese but it is a language nonetheless, and it is older than the forest. The crows speak it; the dog speaks it; the tiger speaks it, and so do the men--some more fluently than others.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“As long as they are carnivorous and/or humanoid, the monster's form matters little. Whether it is Tyrannosaurus rex, saber toothed tiger, grizzly bear, werewolf, bogeyman, vampire, Wendigo, Rangda, Grendel, Moby-Dick, Joseph Stalin, the Devil, or any other manifestation of the Beast, all are objects of dark fascination, in large part because of their capacity to consciously, willfully destroy us. What unites these creatures--ancient or modern, real or imagined, beautiful or repulsive, animal, human, or god--is their superhuman strength, malevolent cunning, and, above all, their capricious, often vengeful appetite--for us. This, in fact, is our expectation of them; it's a kind of contract we have. In this capacity, the seemingly inexhaustible power of predators to fascinate us--to "capture attention"--fulfills a need far beyond morbid titillation. It has a practical application. Over time, these creatures or, more specifically, the dangers they represent, have found their way into our consciousness and taken up permanent residence there. In return, we have shown extraordinary loyalty to them--to the point that we re-create them over and over in every medium, through every era and culture, tuning and adapting them to suit changing times and needs. It seems they are a key ingredient in the glue that binds us to ourselves and to each other.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“What other creature, besides the lion, the tiger, and the whale, can answer Creation in its own language?”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“He takes two tea bags in a four-ounce cup and he doesn’t mince words: when a pair of earnest British journalists once asked him how he thought the tigers could be saved, his answer, “AIDS,” caught them off guard.
“But don’t you care about people?” one of them asked.
“Not really,” he replied. “Especially not the Chinese.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“Like Trush, Sheriff Gorunov is a born Alpha, a handsome, fire-breathing dragon of a man who smokes with an alarming vigor: cigarette clamped between his canines at the point where filter and tobacco meet, the act of inhaling fully integrated into breath and speech such that there is no discernible pause, only billowing smoke that seems to be a natural by-product of a voice that booms even in the confines of his quiet kitchen.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“Markov died while trying to fit a small, slippery shotgun shell into a narrow gun barrel, in the dark, at thirty below zero—with a tiger bearing down on him from ten yards away.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger

“I’ve read a tiger’s not dangerous,
They say the tiger won’t attack
But one thing’s not clear to me.
Has he read this, too? Does he know?”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“The tiger is a hunter, just the same as a man is a hunter. A hunter has to think about how to get his prey. It is different for boar and deer: if leaves or cones fall down from a tree, that’s what they eat; there is no need to think. Tigers think.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger

“Witnesses, native and Russian alike, agree that there is something almost metaphysical about the tiger’s ability to will itself into nonbeing—to, in effect, cloak itself. In the Bikin valley, it is generally believed that if a tiger has decided to attack you, you will not be able to see it. With the exception of the polar bear, which also hunts by stealth, there is no other land mammal this big whose survival depends on its ability to disappear.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“And this is precisely where the tension lies: Panthera tigris and Homo sapiens are actually very much alike, and we are drawn to many of the same things, if for slightly different reasons. Both of us demand large territories; both of us have prodigious appetites for meat; both of us require control over our living space and are prepared to defend it, and both of us have an enormous sense of entitlement to the resources around us. If a tiger can poach on another's territory, it probably will, and so, of course, will we. A key difference, however, is that tigers only take what they need.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“She was after my dog, and I threw myself at her, swearing and trying to smack her with my fishing rod. She changed direction in midair and landed. I tried again to smack her on the nose and just missed her. She ran away and, since then, not only has she stopped showing up at the cabin, she keeps her distance from me. She was trying to get me to leave the area, but when we got face-to-face and she saw that I was not afraid of her, she started avoiding me.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger

“As he proceeded systematically from dwelling to dwelling, the tiger was, in essence, running a trapline of human beings.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger

“A moment later, the clearing exploded. The first impact of a tiger attack does not come from the tiger itself, but from the roar, which, in addition to being loud like a jet, has an eerie capacity to fill the space around it, leaving one unsure where to look. From close range, the experience is overwhelming, and has the effect of separating you from yourself, of scrambling the very neurology that is supposed to save you at times like this. Those who have done serious tiger time—scientists and hunters—describe the tiger’s roar not as a sound so much as a full-body experience. Sober, disciplined biologists have sworn they felt the earth shake. One Russian hunter, taken by surprise, recalled thinking a dam had burst somewhere. In short, the tiger’s roar exists in the same sonic realm as a natural catastrophe; it is one of those sounds that give meaning and substance to “the fear of God.” The Udeghe, Yuri Pionka, described the roar of that tiger in the clearing as soul-rending. The literal translation from Russian is “soul-tearing-apart.” “I have heard tigers in the forest,” he said, “but I never heard anything like that. It was vicious; terrifying.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger

“Around the village, tree-lined ridges rose up against the deeper dark beyond and, along that wavering verge, stars moved imperceptibly in the treetops, encircling man and animal alike. Altogether, those cross-hatched branches wove a spangled basket against the sky and somewhere inside it was the tiger, hunting.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger

“Once you have passed the solitude test,” continued Solkin, “you have absolute confidence in yourself, and there is nothing that can break you afterward.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger

“A century ago, many Russians lived this way in the Far East, and most natives did, too. Then, there wasn't an alternative, but the expectations for what life can and should be have changed radically in the past twenty years. Under communism, there was room, albeit strictly controlled, for aspiration, and there was a State guarantee of basic security in terms of education, employment. housing, and food. But most of these assurances disintegrated after perestroika. Replacing them, along with crime, alcoholism, and despondency, were satellite dishes offering multiple channels that allowed you to see just how far behind you really were. Nowadays, in many parts of the world-not just Sobolonye-it is possible to starve while watching television.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“The first sign of trouble was the crows. Carrion crows will follow a tiger the same way seagulls follow a fishing boat: by sticking with a proven winner, they conserve energy and shift the odds of getting fed from If to When. When Trush and his men climbed down from the Kung, they heard the crows' raucous kvetching concentrated just west of the entrance road. Trush noted the way their dark bodies swirled and flickered above the trees and, even if he hadn't been warned ahead of time, this would have told him all he needed to know: something big was dead, or dying, and it was being guarded.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“But there are some key differences: tigers can weigh six hundred pounds; they have been hunting large prey, including humans, for two million years; and they have a memory. For these reasons, tigers can be as dangerous to the people trying to protect them as they are to those who would profit from them.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger

“Confucius was passing by Mount Tai when he saw a distraught woman weeping by a grave. Resting his hands on the wooden bar at the front of his carriage, he listened to her wailing. Then, he sent a student to speak the following words: “A great misfortune must have befallen you, that you cry so bitterly.” She answered, “Indeed it is so. My husband and his father have both been killed by tigers, and now my son, too, has fallen prey to them.” Confucius asked, “Why do you remain here?” She answered, “No callous government rules here.” Confucius said, “Remember that, my students. Callous government is more ravenous than tigers.” “The Book of Rites”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger

“This begs an obscure metaphysical question: if the body journeys through the viscera of an animal—if its substance and essence become that animal—what happens to the soul? Hurricanes, avalanches, and volcanoes consume people, but such random acts of insensate violence are considered acts of God; they don’t pick their targets, nor do they metabolize them. It is rare that one is confronted, as these men were, with such overwhelming evidence of one’s own mutability in the face of a sentient natural force. In this way, tigers and their quasi-conscious kin occupy an uncharted middle ground somewhere between humans and natural catastrophes.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger