“Emerson,’ I said, choosing my words with care, ‘it is a sheer drop from the cleft down to the base of the cliff. If you are bent on breaking your arm or your leg or your neck or all three, find a place closer to home so we won’t have to carry you such a distance.”

Noble causes have a deplorable effect on the morals of the persons who espouse them.

I have learned that particularly clever ideas do not always stand up under close scrutiny.

stereotypes are awfully misleading. There are typical librarians, but not all librarians are typical.

Sekhmet crawled onto Ramses’s lap and began to purr. ‘The creature oozes like a furry slug,’ said Ramses, eyeing it without favor.

Children, I feel, are as much entitled to privacy as human beings.

Humor is an excellent method of keeping a tight rein on unproductive displays of emotion.

The trouble with unknown enemies is that they are so difficult to identify.

The way to get on with a cat is to treat it as an equal – or even better, as the superior it knows itself to be.

I do hope you have some money. I’m getting tired of hitting people.

I would not be at all surprised to find that it was for gold that Cain committed the first murder. (It happened a very long time ago, and Holy Writ, though no doubt divinely inspired, is a trifle careless about details. God is not a historian).

I knew the answer, and–of course–so did Ramses. He has superb breath control and always gets in ahead of me.

The only way to do it is to do it: by writing, writing, writing.

I can do a book in three months if I spend all day, seven days a week at it and, in fact, I work better that way.

Spring is always cruel, with its false promise of resurrection.

People who relate what they believe to be new and startling information like to have such information received with exclamations of astonishment and admiration.

There is nothing sadder than the cheerful letters of the dead, expressing hopes that were never fulfilled, ambitions that were never achieved, dreams cut off before they could come to fruition.

I am the drying meadow; you the unspoken apology; he is the fluctuating distance between mother and son.

Finally he closed the distance between us and kissed me – a sweet, gentle kiss that held within it every single one of the thousand days I’d loved him as my everything, long after I’d begun to love him as a friend.

When we were at the Apollo, Holiday was a block away. I asked her for her autograph.

When dawn comes, that memory gradually distances…Tonight, I will bring it to sleep with me, so that will not be taken away by the waves of the night.

The distance between who I am, and who I want to be is measure only, by my actions.

Freedom is a state of complete and absolute insecurity and not knowing. So, in seeking security and safety, you actually distance yourself from the freedom you want.

Human beings have a drive for security and safety, which is often what fuels the spiritual search. This very drive for security and safety is what causes so much misery and confusion.

whereas the dog strives to lessen the distance between himself and man, seeks ever to be intelligent and intelligible, and translates into looks and actions the words he cannot speak, the cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.