Animals Quotes

Animals, she says, a dog, it makes us human. Proof of our humanity. Other people, they just make us redundant. A dog or cat, a bird or a lizard, it makes us God.

There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs.

We go upstairs to her room, and Marla tells me how in the wild you don't see old animals because as soon as they age, animals die. If they get sick or slow down, something stronger kills them. Animals aren't meant to get old.
Marla lies down on her bed and undoes the tie on her bathrobe, and says our culture has made death something wrong. Old animals should be an unnatural exception.

When I was four, we fostered a cousin’s dog for a summer. I kicked it. My father told me we don’t kick animals. When I was seven, I mourned the death of my goldfish. I learned that my father had flushed him down the toilet. I told my father — in other, less civil words — we don’t flush animals down the toilet.

The animal looks at us, and we are naked before it.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

“Our humanity isn’t measured by how we treat other people,” the Missing Link says. Fingering the layer of cat hair on his coat sleeve, he says, “Our humanity is measured by how we treat animals.”