The Zoo Story Quotes

JERRY: I’ve been to the zoo (PETER doesn’t notice). I said I’ve been to the zoo. MISTER, I SAID I’VE BEEN TO THE ZOO!

JERRY: I don’t talk to many people—except to say like: give me a beer, or where’s the john, or what time does the feature go on, or keep your hands to yourself, buddy. You know—things like that.

PETER: I must say I don’t…

JERRY: But every once in a while I like to talk to somebody, really talk; like to get to know somebody, know all about him.

PETER (lightly laughing, still a little uncomfortable): And am I the guinea pig for today?

JERRY: Do you know what I did before I went to the zoo today? I walked all the way up Fifth Avenue from Washington Square; all the way.

PETER: Oh; you live in the Village! (This seems to enlighten PETER)

JERRY: No, I don’t. I took the subway down to the Village so I could walk all the way up Fifth Avenue to the zoo. It’s one of those things a person has to do; sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way in order to come back a short distance correctly.

PETER (almost pouting): Oh, I thought you lived in the Village.

JERRY: What were you trying to do? Make sense out of things? Bring order? The old pigeonhole bit?

JERRY: What I wanted to get at is the value difference between pornographic playing cards when you’re a kid, and pornographic playing cards when you’re older. It’s that when you’re a kid you use the cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when you’re older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy.

PETER: It’s so…unthinkable. I find it hard to believe that people such as that really are.

JERRY (Lightly mocking): It’s for reading about, isn’t it?

PETER (Seriously): Yes.

JERRY: And fact is better left to fiction.

JERRY: It’s just that if you can’t deal with people, you have to make a start somewhere… with vomiting, with fury because the pretty little ladies aren’t pretty little ladies, with making money with your body which is an act of love and I could prove it, with howling because you’re alive; with God. How about that?

JERRY: So: the dog and I looked at each other. I longer than the dog. And what I saw then has been the same ever since. Whenever the dog and I see each other we both stop where we are. We regard each other with a mixture of sadness and suspicion, and then we feign indifference. We walk past each other safely; we have an understanding. It’s very sad, but you’ll have to admit that it is an understanding.

JERRY: I have learned that neither kindness nor cruelty, independent of themselves, creates any effect beyond themselves; and I have learned that the two combined, together at the same time, are the teaching emotion. And what is gained is loss.

PETER: (As JERRY tickles) Oh, hee, hee, hee. I must go. I . . .hee, hee, hee. After all, stop, stop, hee, hee, hee, after all, the parakeets will be getting dinner ready soon. Hee, hee. And the cats are setting the table. Stop, stop, and, and . . . (PETER is beside himself now) . . . and we’re having . . . hee, hee . . . uh . . . ho, ho, ho.

JERRY: I went to the zoo to find out more about the way people exist with animals, and the way animals exist with each other, and with people too. It probably wasn’t a fair test, what with everyone separated by bars from everyone else, the animals for the most part from each other, and always the people from the animals. But, if it’s a zoo, that’s the way it is.

JERRY: You have everything in the world you want; you’ve told me about your home, and your family, and your own little zoo. You have everything, and now you want this bench. Are these the things men fight for? Tell me, Peter, is this bench, this iron and this wood, is this your honor? Is this the thing in the world you’d fight for? Can you think of anything more absurd?

JERRY: And Peter, I’ll tell you something now; you’re not really a vegetable; it’s all right, you’re an animal. You’re an animal, too.