“Rats and mice are not generally regarded as pets, but as pests; they have few defenders. Yet the pain a rat or a mouse feels is every bit as real as that of any pet. In laboratories, they suffer, as anybody who has heard them moan, cry, whimper and even scream knows. The experimenters dissimulate about this by insisting that they are merely vocalising. Descartes lives on.”

“Rats and mice, for example, tend spontaneously to develop a high incidence of tumors. This renders them unsuitable for detecting tumors. Still, no animals are used as often as rats and mice for assessing the effect of numerous experimental treatments upon the production of tumors. The reason is that they are inexpensive and take up little room.”

“If Michael Jackson could write a song for a rat, I could write a song for [my pet bulldog] Noelle.”

“[Footnote:] A few Cobras in your home will soon clear it of Rats and Mice. Of course, you will still have the Cobras.”

“The human population growth that has taken place over the past few hundred years resembles nothing so much as the spikes that occur in the numbers of rabbits, house mice and plague rats. Like them, it can only be short-lived.”

“In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realize it is far more common for men to turn into rats.”

“Reader, you must know that an interesting fate (sometimes involving rats, sometimes not) awaits almost everyone, mouse or man, who does not conform.”

“So many people have that relationship. The companionship. The connection. To our – to other beings, our pets. I hate to call them pets. But you know, to other creatures that we share our lives with.”

“Not every pigeon is a rat with wings. Not every rat with wings is a dove of peace.”

“Can't be part of the rat race when you're one of the rats who knows you're in a cage.”