"El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."

"My troubles are all over, and I am at home; and often before I am quite awake, I fancy I am still in the orchard at Birtwick, standing with my old friends under the apple trees."

"My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt."

"[W]e call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words."

"I am never afraid of what I know."

"If you in the morning Throw minutes away, You can't pick them up In the course of a day. You may hurry and scurry, And flurry and worry, You've lost them forever, Forever and aye."

"[I]f they strain me up tight, why, let 'em look out! I can't bear it, and I won't."

"If a thing is right, it can be done, and if it is wrong, it can be done without; and a good man will find a way."

"God had given men reason, by which they could find out things for themselves, but He had given animals knowledge which did not depend on reason, and which was much more prompt and perfect in its way, and by which they had often saved the lives of men."

"[T]here is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham."

"[W]e shall all have to be judged according to our works, whether they be towards man or towards beast."

"[T]hey always think they can improve upon nature and mend what God has made."

"Do you know why this world is as bad as it is? […] it is because people think only about their own business, and won't trouble themselves to stand up for the oppressed, nor bring the wrong-doer to light."

"Oh! if people knew what a comfort to horses a light hand is."

"It is good people who make good places."

"The first place that I can well remember, was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it. Some shady trees leaned over it, and rushes and water-lilies grew at the deep end. Over the hedge on one side we looked into a ploughed field, and on the other we looked over a gate at our master's house, which stood by the roadside; at the top of the meadow was a plantation of fir trees, and at the bottom a running brook overhung by a steep bank."

"[D]o your best wherever it is, and keep up your good name."

"[A] bad-tempered man will never make a good-tempered horse."

"To my dear and honoured Mother, whose life, no less than her pen, has been devoted to the welfare of others, this little book is affectionately dedicated."

"(Tove) Jansson was an upper-middle-class bohemian lesbian, living on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland (Klovharu). I was a suburban scouser on a new-build housing estate. It felt as though she was writing just for me."

"We must commence to act as if a united, neutral and pacific Europe already exists. We must learn to be loyal, not to 'East' or 'West' but to each other, and we must disregard the prohibitions and limitations imposed by any national state."

"We are going to stop those piffling cruise missiles, you know, on land if not on sea. What we have to do is seize this moment of mass consciousness to move directly into the structures of the Cold War themselves, the blocs behind the missiles. We have to keep to some very large and simple ideas – like remaking Europe and putting peace and liberty together... This is the most serious political work I have ever done or will ever do in my life. It won't last long. If we succeed a little, the politicians will move in and take it off us."

"I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the "obsolete" hand-loom weaver, the "Utopian" artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience; and, if they were casualties of history, they remain, condemned in their own lives, as casualties."

"It was both true, and not the complete truth, like so much of his talk."

"“And now you have had to alter your theory.” ”Well,” Andrews said, smiling, “that’s science.”"

"“I didn’t know that you were into politics.” “Anyone with money has to be. Real money, I mean. Even criminals need to keep a politician in their pockets these days.”"

"“They’re following one bunch of herders. Marta has this idea that she can work out their social behavior.” “And do they have any?” Dorthy asked. “Fucking mostly,” Andrew said evenly. The boss female controls the group by choosing which males fuck her, and the males fuck each other, too, to establish their dominance. Rather like the Navy.”"

"Zithsa hunter claim they sometimes see man-shaped creatures in the lowlands. Mist demons, the hunters call them, and say that they are the ghosts of the fabled lost race. I say they are half vodka, half imagination."

"We wish not to be alone in the universe, Dorthy, and this drives people to invent things that are not really there."

"“We must remember that they are alien.” “That’s hardly a basis for speculation now. It explains everything and nothing.”"

"Stay the same and after a while you come to think that nothing will ever change."

"Things are simply what they are, neither good nor bad. The potential for evil is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

"“I read in some of it (the reference is to Shakespeare). It’s not so bad when you get used to it, pretty archaic though. Why do you like old stuff like this?” “It has everything in it, if you look hard enough,” Dorthy said, taking the sheaf. “Love, jealousy, avarice, loyalty, murder, madness...I find it reassuring that human nature is so constant.”"

"“I see where you’re going with this, Wil. Bravo!” “Do you?” replied Wil. “Because honestly, Mr. Dinsdale, if you know where I’m going, perhaps you’d be kind enough to give me directions!”"

"Wil had learned as a child that the best way to deal with goons—the more muscle-bound the better—was to confuse them. For while the human bicep was something anyone with a little patience could build up to an impressive size, the human brain was less a variable and more something a person was born with. Goons, in his experience, were rarely born with very large ones."

"He’d carefully judged the measure of his opponent’s resolve, and knew that a man as greedy and weak willed as Marcus James would always be the one to crack first under duress."

"That’s it! That’s the utterly random mental chaos I was looking for! No one’s going to predict that response! Anything Else?"

"You know, Mr. Dinsdale, this all sounds delightfully bananas but I’m kinda monkeyed out this week."

"The Quantum Needle was theoretically used to repair any tears in the fabric of the space-time continuum, though how it actually worked in the field was a matter of some debate. When Wil had pressed the question, Mr. Dinsdale had simply mumbled, “quantum physics,” which seemed to be his standard response to any question he didn’t know the answer to."

"“Wil,” said Barry with a weight of sadness that only a parent can know, “I tried as hard as I could.”"

"Your eyes only see what your mind lets you believe!"

"You can’t hate change. It’s like hating life."

"Life is not about how you use your eyes; it’s about having vision."

"Ignoring the old man, Wil reasoned, was the first step to figuring him out."

"He stopped in his tracks to consider what might be Actually Occurring, as opposed to Apparently Occurring."

"“They survive.” “Ah yes, survive. And achieve nothing to deserve it.” “The only meaning of life, if it can be said to have meaning, is to survive. My brothers and sisters, herding their children on the plains, find meaning in the simple pattern of their lives and need nothing more. They are immersed in the processes of the world: all is one. That is their religion. They seek no other meaning. “Your race, now, believes that expansion is all. You think to outrace your dark destiny, believe that the whole universe is yours when you understand so little of it.”"

"It was apparent that he was out of his league, and that the only way to compete would be to play along until everyone reverted to ignoring him. At that point, he’d be able to slip out the back door and return to his previously scheduled life."

"Many people were bitterly puzzled that the first truly intelligent aliens to be found should be so immediately, unremittingly hostile, but the astronomers shrugged it off. The universe was at best a marginal place for life."

"Wil Morgan awoke from his regular anxiety dream, in which he had just finished second in a World’s Biggest Failure competition."

"Outside, the city streets were gray and sodden. Indeed, Wil often fancied this was the city where they had invented the color gray."