“Family is everything! he always said when he went overboard with sentimentality. If you dont have family, what do you have?”

“Why should I ignore them? In my own house? Spiteful snobs! Ive appalling taste, do I? Im skeletal, am I? Anyone would look skeletal next to them. They are both starting to look like porkers! As soo...”

“There are people that have had worse happen to them. All those people that died in the hotel bombing? All those that were maimed and left orphaned?”

“It was a fairly large house, larger than all our previous dwellings. There were two pinkwashed, picture- windowed, orange gable-roofed storeys, encompassing eight rooms, and an adjoining, presently...”

“Salila! said Maia, outraged. Another DOG? ON TOP OF ALL THE OTHER ANIMALS?SO WHAT....? I began, and then got cut off as Polly attempted to land her shaggy grey bulk into my lap,unmindful as ever of...”

“LOOK AT HIM! Mum, LOOK! OUR NEW DOG! ISNT HE A BEAUTY?Another DOG! came Maias amazed voice.”

“Even the Middle Ages, which condemned and punished animals in due form, was in this way much closer to them than we are. They held them to be guilty: which was a way of honoring them. We take them ...”

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.”

“If a man whistles at you, don't turn around. You are a lady not a dog.”

“I heard the man and woman cry a warning as I frantically racked my brain for some sort of throat-repairing spell, which I was clearly about to need. Of course the only words that I actually managed...”

“I am a believer in free will. If my dog chooses to hate the whole human race except myself, it must be free to do so.”

“Growing up in Kansas City, I was always neat, the teacher's pet, know-it-all type.”

“Maybe I was unpopular a bit because I was a teacher's pet. But even the teachers complained about me. They would say to my parents, 'For every one question any pupil asks, Walter asks 10.'”

“I'd say the best is when I was in Africa, I saw a hippo in a house. Someone had a pet hippo. And they're meant to be one of the most dangerous animals on the planet, and they had one that was sort ...”