Quotes from Richard Adams

Hoi, hoi u embleer hrair! M'saion ule' hraka vair!

With a kind of wry envy, Hazel realized that Bigwig was actually looking forward to meeting the Efrafan assault. He knew he could fight and he meant to show it. He was not thinking of anything else. The hopelessness of their chances had no important place in his thoughts. Even the sound of the digging, clearer already, only set him thinking of the best way to sell his life as dearly as he could.

Why do the men come, do you suppose? Who knows why men do anything?

A magpie, seeing some light-colored object conspicuous on the empty slope, flew closer to look. but all that lay there was a splintered peg and a twisted length of wire.

Odysseus...sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope.

You can't call your life your own: and in return you have safety, if it's worth having at the price you pay.

Most of them had not understood Blackberry's discovery of the raft and at once forgot it.

Your storm, Thlayli-rah. Use it.

Nevertheless, the number of hoots I give for them is restricted to less than two.

And, Freedom, was I free?

People who record birdsong generally do it very early--before six o'clock--if they can. Soon after that, the invasion of distant noise in most woodland becomes too constant and too loud.

I distinguish two types of human beings, Love people, who love the sky and the flowers, and Power People, who are essentially sold on naked power.

My lord,' replied El-ahrairah, 'I have come to give you my life. My life for my people.' The Black Rabbit drew his claws along the floor. Bargains, bargains, El-ahrairah,' he said. 'There is not a day or a night but a doe offers her life for her kittens, or some honest captain of Owsla his life for his Chief Rabbit's. Sometimes it is taken, sometimes it is not. But there is no bargain, for here what is is what must be.

But I have learned that with creatures one loves, suffering is not the only thing for which one may pity them. A rabbit who does not know when a gift has made him safe is poorer than a slug, even though he may think otherwise himself.

I know. And we have no does--not one--and no does means no kittens and in a few years no warren. It may seem incredible that the rabbits had given no thought to so vital a matter. But men have made the same mistake more than once--left the whole business out of account, or been content to trust to luck and the fortune of war.

Hazel, like nearly all wild animals, was unaccustomed to look up at the sky. What he thought of as the sky was the horizon, usually broken by trees and hedges.

I'm sick and tired of it, he said, It's the same all the time. 'These are my claws, so this is my cowslip. 'These are my teeth, so this is my burrow.' I'll tell you, if I ever get into the Owsla, I'll treat outskirters with a bit of decency.

Wisdom is found on the desolate hillside... where none comes to feed, and the stony bank where the rabbit scratches a hole in vain.

Rabbits have enough enemies as it is. They ought not to make more among themselves.

Watership Down is a real place, like all the places in the book. It lies in north Hampshire, about six miles southwest of Newbury and two miles west of Kingsclere.

Some say that the Black Rabbit hates us and wants our destruction. But the truth is—or so they taught me—that he, too, serves Lord Frith and does no more than his appointed task

I don't know what I'd been expecting. You know how you let yourself think that everything will be all right if you can only get to a certain place or do a certain thing. But when you get there you find it's not that simple.

Sheep used to have wings. One flew into the sky and all the others followed. They took their wings off while feeding in the warm sun but the wind blew away their wings so they couldn't fly anymore. They had to return to earth by drifting to where the sky curves down and touches the land, and then walk round the long way.. i like that..

What is this stuff, do you know?" he asked. "No, I don't," said Hazel. "I've never seen it before." "There's a lot we don't know," said Blackberry. "About this place, I mean. The plants are new, the smells are new. We're going to need some new ideas ourselves." "Well, you're the fellow for ideas," said Hazel. "I never know anything until you tell me.