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9df0084
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Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that are gods.
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dogs
religion
god
shelter
atheism
cats
water
food
pets
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Christopher Hitchens |
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a8507aa
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Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.
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comfort
pets
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James Herriot |
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e3f0a10
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I said hello to the poodle.
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mythology
pets
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Rick Riordan |
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61bc3c7
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A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.
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dogs
family
families
family-life
pets
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Arthur Conan Doyle |
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4094592
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Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it waiting for us to come home each day. It is amazing how much love and laughter they bring into our lives and even how much closer we become with each other because of them.
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dogs
love
pets
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John grogan |
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63042d2
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"i made myself a snowball As perfect as can be. I thought I'd keep it as a pet, And let it sleep with me. I made it some pajamas And a pillow for it's head.
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pets
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Shel Silverstein |
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5225465
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Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.
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dogs
pets
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Orhan Pamuk |
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82d8187
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No matter how close we are to another person, few human relationships are as free from strife, disagreement, and frustration as is the relationship you have with a good dog. Few human beings give of themselves to another as a dog gives of itself. I also suspect that we cherish dogs because their unblemished souls make us wish - consciously or unconsciously - that we were as innocent as they are, and make us yearn for a place where innocence is universal and where the meanness, the betrayals, and the cruelties of this world are unknown.
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relationships
love
pets
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Dean Koontz |
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8b13f68
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"when I am feeling low all i have to do is watch my cats and my
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poem
courage
poetry
pets
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Charles Bukowski |
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ae5d6bc
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Sometimes losing a pet is more painful than losing a human because in the case of the pet, you were not pretending to love it.
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pets
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Amy Sedaris |
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73ed2b5
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There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
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heaven
love
unloving
vulnerability-selfishness
pets
hell
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C.S. Lewis |
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4d53c83
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Few religions are definite about the size of Heaven, but on the planet Earth the Book of Revelation (ch. XXI, v.16) gives it as a cube 12,000 furlongs on a side. This is somewhat less than 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic feet. Even allowing that the Heavenly Host and other essential services take up at least two thirds of this space, this leaves about one million cubic feet of space for each human occupant- assuming that every creature that could be called 'human' is allowed in, and the the human race eventually totals a thousand times the numbers of humans alive up until now. This is such a generous amount of space that it suggests that room has also been provided for some alien races or - a happy thought - that pets are allowed.
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pets
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Terry Pratchett |
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f1c3ab9
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Later, when his father left him, the boy cried over his pet, until eventually his father sent a servant to take the body of the bird away and bury it. The boy never cried again, and he never forgot what he'd learned: that to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.
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pets
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Cassandra Clare |
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7678a18
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Men cannot grieve as dogs do. But they grieve for many years.
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dogs
grief
love
farseer
robin-hobb
pets
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Robin Hobb |
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914ace4
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Did I ever tell you my pet peeve?' No,' I said. People who dress up their pets to look like Little Lord Fauntleroys or cowboys, clowns, ballerinas. As if it's not enough just to be a dog or cat or turtle.
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pets
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Jerry Spinelli |
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3564cbc
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Generally speaking, our prisoners were capable of loving animals, and if they had been allowed they would have delighted to rear large numbers of domestic animals and birds in the prison. And I wonder what other activity could better have softened and refined their harsh and brutal natures than this. But it was not allowed. Neither the regulations nor the nature of the prison made it possible.
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prison
pets
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Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
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9adb328
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When the man was disgraced and told to go away, he was allowed to ask all the animals whether any of them would come with him and share his fortunes and his life. There were only two who agreed to come entirely of their own accord, and they were the dog and the cat. And ever since then, those two have been jealous of each other, and each is for ever trying to make man choose which one he likes best. Every man prefers one or the other.
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dogs
companions
cats
pets
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Richard Adams |
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34d4167
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As for her cat, Galahad made an appearance, regally ignored everyone under four feet until he clued in that this variety of humans was more likely to drop food on the floor, or sneak him handouts. He ended in a gluttonous coma, tubby belly up under a table.
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galahad
pets
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J.D. Robb |
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7d433da
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"Plenty of animals had pets, but few were more devoted than the mouse, who owned a baby corn snake--"A rescue snake, she'd be quick to inform you. This made it sound like he'd been snatched from the jaws of a raccoon, but what she'd really rescued him from was a life without her love. And what sort of a life would that have been?"
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pets
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David Sedaris |
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2d1d4fb
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New Rule: If you're one of the one-in-three married women who say your pet is a better listener than your husband, you talk too much. And I have some bad news for you: Your dog's not listening, either; he's waiting for food to fall out of your mouth.
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marriage
humor
listening
pets
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Bill Maher |
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a7a30ab
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An ordinary man can enjoy breakfasting on juice and rye bread. But when you are underfed, scorned, miserable or just plain bored, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little more colourful, exciting, tastier, meatier and juicier.
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lessons
dark
humor
life
series
animated
cat-haee
cathaee
children-s-books
dark-humor
edward-gorey
enhanced-epub3
general-fiction
graphic-novel
haee
illustrated-books
middlings
pets
quirky
quirky-characters
r-s-vern
shel-silverstein
tim-burton
trilogy
young-adults
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R.S. Vern |
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3930d89
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New Rule: Stop leaving couches on the sidewalk. Besides being lazy and ugly, it's animal cruelty. You teach your dog not to pee on the couch, and then when you take him to the place he's supposed to pee, there's a couch.
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humor
pets
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Bill Maher |
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7769f6b
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It is natural for our unamiable sex to dislike the creatures, for you ladies lavish so many caresses upon them.
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dogs
men
women
dislike
cats
pets
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Anne Brontë |
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492a5ab
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Live by yourself and you bound to talk yourself and when ye commence that folks start it up that you're light in the head. But I reckon it's all right to talk to a dog since most folks do even if a dog don't understand and cain't answer if he did.
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dogs
solitude
hermits
talking-to-yourself
crazy
pets
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Cormac McCarthy |
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020134c
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Who doesn't know that the dog is the epitome of devotion? But it's this devotion to humans, so instinctual that it's given freely even to persons who are unworthy of it, that has made me prefer cats. Give me a pet that can get along without me.
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dogs
self-reliance
devotion
pets
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Sigrid Nunez |
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2c6696f
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There is a thing about the trust of a dog that makes up for a lot of heartache we take in this life.
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pets
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Don DeLillo |
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03dc61b
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Sometimes she could swear that she saw, in Joe Grey's eyes, a judgment far too perceptive, a watchfulness too aware and intense for any cat. Charlie didn't understand what it was about those two [cats]. Both had a presence that set them apart from other felines. Maybe she just knew them better. Maybe all cats had that quality of awareness, when you knew them.
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cats
pets
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Shirley Rousseau Murphy |
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49e55b2
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Dogs (like rats) are multitalented but they are also not very smart the way humans are. A recent book, devoted to the intelligence of dogs, is 250+ pages long (Stanley Coren, The Intelligence of Dogs: A Guide to the Thoughts, Emotions, and Inner Lives of Our Canine Companions, 1994). Interestingly, despite careful qualifications by Coren regarding definitions, the ranking of breeds by intelligence literally made newspaper headlines. We are obviously fascinated by the notion that dogs - or at least certain breeds of dog - might, just might, be really, really smart. It all makes as much sense as evaluating humans on our ability to sniff for bombs or echo-locate.
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dogs
non-aversive-dog-training
puppy
dogs-and-humans
pets
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Jean Donaldson |
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5877c0b
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"See that's exactly why I don't want a dog." "Why?" "Because it'll just die." "Everybody dies, Brooklyn." Like that makes it okay or something."
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moving-on
pets
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Lisa Schroeder |
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fb14f8a
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She could not bear the tenderness which a dog would evoke, she did not want the pain of another love. She knew how very much, how desperately, she would love her dog; and dogs are vulnerable and short-lived and die.
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love
the-message-to-the-planet
iris-murdoch
painful
tenderness
pets
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Iris Murdoch |
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602e1a0
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Listen, said Beverly. Let me tell you something. There is no Very Friendly Animal Center. That cat is long gone.
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loss
pets
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Kate DiCamillo |
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52cdaa1
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"Pets are almost always fatal, to oneself or to them. It is the curse of possession or motherhood. Mothers ruin their children, choke them like ivy. Dog-lovers steal the souls of their dogs and lose something in exchange. There is an essay on this subject by (I think) Stella Benson called "A Firefly to Steer By." Everybody ought to read it." --
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motherhood
friendship
mothers
animals
pets
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T.H. White |
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9d25602
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I like that the Aborigines say dogs make people human
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dogs
pets
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Sigrid Nunez |
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2cd6a77
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The little Otak was hiding in the rafters of the house, as it did when strangers entered. There it stayed while the rain beat on the walls and the fire sank down and the night wearing slowly along left the old woman nodding by the hearthpit. Then the otak crept down and came to Ged where he lay stretched stiff and still upon the bed. It began to lick his hands and wrists, long and patiently, with its dry leaf-brown tongue. Crouching beside his head it licked his temple, his scarred cheek, and softly his closed eyes. And very slowly under that soft touch Ged roused. He woke, not knowing where he had been or where he was or what was the faint grey light in the air about him, which was the light of dawn coming to the world. Then the otak curled up near his shoulder as usual, and went to sleep. Later, when Ged thought back upon that night, he knew that had none touched him when he lay thus spirit-lost, had none called him back in some way, he might have been lost for good. It was only the dumb instinctive wisdom of the beast who licks his hurt companion to comfort him, and yet in that wisdom Ged saw something akin to his own power, something that went as deep as wizardry. From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees
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wisdom
companionshipship
hoeg
otak
loyalty
pets
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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02bf413
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"The little white bundle--toddling dutifully down the hall to the front door--froze. Then a high-pitched scream as he began to run as fast as he could (which was not very fast at all, any more) and Boris--whooping with laughter--dropped to his knees. "Oh!" snatching him up, as Popchik wriggled and struggled. "You got fat! He got fat!" he said indignantly as Popchik jumped up and kissed him on the face. "You let him get fat! Yes, hello, poustyshka, little bit of fluff you, hello! You remember me, don't you?" He had toppled over on his back, stretched out and laughing, as Popchik--still screaming with joy--jumped all over him. "He remembers me!"
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reunion
pets
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Donna Tartt |
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29ff3a3
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I had been agitating for a pet for some time. In my head I had a white rabbit called Ezra who bit people who ignored me. Ezra's pelt was as white as the soul in heaven but his heart was black...
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good
rabbits
vengeance
evil
pets
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Jeanette Winterson |
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ac8b0a1
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I like that, well before T.S. Eliot expressed himself on the matter, Samuel Butler stated that the severest test of the imagination was naming a cat.
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names
imagination
naming
pets
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Sigrid Nunez |
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e88575f
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Psipsina emerged from inside the tunic, and jumped up on the table in order to curl up inside the cap, which had been her favourite resting place ever since she discovered the joys of contortionism; she filled it and overflowed from it in such a tangle and jumble of whiskers, ears, tail and paws that it was impossible to tell which part of her was which, and she slept in it because it reminded her of gifts of salami and chicken skins.
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humour
pets
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Louis de Bernières |
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e235fa5
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Like I said before, kids were okay from a distance, but I didn't think they'd ever replace hamsters.
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pets
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Janet Evanovich |