“To be good or bad doesn't count: life out in this world doesn't depend on that. It depends on a relation of forces based on violence. And survival is violence. You'll wear leather shoes because someone has killed a cow and skinned it to make leather.”

“Ball is made of leather, leather comes from cows, cows eat grass, and there is where the ball must be.”

“Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.”

“Wanting to reform the world without discovering one's true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.”

“These weren't cheap modern books; these were books bound in leather, and not just leather, but leather from clever cows who had given their lives for literature after a happy existence in the very best pastures.”

“Old friends, like old shoes, are comfortable. But old shoes, unlike old friends, tend not to be supportive: it is easier to stumble and sprain an ankle while wearing a pair of old shoes than it is in new shoes, with their less yielding leather.”

“But if I wanted shoes, and you had given me a piece of leather to make myself shoes, I should be laughed at if I took it.”

“It's easier to put on a pair of shoes than to wrap the earth in leather.”

“I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather.”

“Killing Mr. Griffin doesn't encourage violence in schools any more than the story of Cain and Able encourages children to kill their younger brothers.”