Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.

Total absence of humor renders life impossible.

Researchers, with science as their authority, will be able to cut animals up, alive, into small pieces, drop them from a great height to see if they are shattered by the fall, or deprive them of sleep for sixteen days and nights continuously for the purposes of an iniquitous monograph. . . . Animal trust, undeserved faith, when at last will you turn away from us? Shall we never tire of deceiving, betraying, tormenting animals before they cease to trust us?

You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.

I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.

I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually.

Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave.