Robert C. O'Brien > Quotes

“When you’ve lived in a cage, you can’t bear not to run, even if what you’re running towards is an illusion.”
― Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

“I have lived in this tree, in this same hollow," the owl said, "for more years than anyone can remember. But now, when the wind blows hard in winter and rocks the forest, I sit here in the dark, and from deep down in the bole, near the roots, I hear a new sound. It is the sound of strands of wood creaking in the cold and snapping one by one. The limbs are falling; the tree is old, and it is dying. Yet I cannot bring myself, after so many years, to leave, to find a new home and move into it, perhaps to fight for it. I, too, have grown old. One of these days, one of these years, the tree will fall, and when it does, if I am still alive, I will fall with it.”
― Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

“By teaching us how to read, they had taught us how to get away.”
― Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

“Still, it seemed to us that the main reason we were hated must be that we always lived by stealing. From the earliest times, rats lived around the edges of human cities and farms, stowed away on men's ships, gnawed holes in their floors and stole their food. Sometimes we were accused of biting human children; I didn't believe that, nor did any of us⎼unless it was some kind of a subnormal rat, bred in the worst of city slums. And that, of course, can happen to people, too.”
― Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

“The real point is this: We don't know where to go because we don't know what we are. Do you want to go back to living in a sewer-pipe? And eating other people's garbage? Because that's what rats do. But the fact is, we aren't rats anymore. We are something Dr. Schultz has made. Something new.”
― Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

“There were two sets of encyclopedias that had sections on rats. From them we learned that we were about the most hated animals on earth, except maybe snakes and germs.
That seemed strange to us, and unjust. [...] But people think we spread diseases, and I suppose possibly we do, though never intentionally, and surely we never spread as many diseases as people themselves do.”
― Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

“C'était, pensa-t-elle, comme un doux peigne passant dans son cerveau, redressant les pensées et défaisant les nœuds.”
― Robert C. O'Brien, The Silver Crown

“Word gets around." "You mean they communicate?" A third voice. "You bet they communicate. And the next time they do come, you can be sure they'll case the place carefully. We were lucky. These rats hadn't been bothered in years. They'd grown careless.”
― Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

“beneath”
― Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

“all winter, far into the night, we read books and we practised writing. 20.”
― Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

“and all the strange rats we saw looked, to us, surprisingly weak and puny. So we were set apart from even our own kind.”
― Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

“One of these days, one of these years, the tree will fall, and when it does, if I am still alive, I will fall with it.”
― Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh

“Mrs Frisby could not bear to watch; and yet, even more, she could not bear not to watch. She”
― Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

“I say, why start from nothing if you can start with everything? We've already got a civilization.'
'No. We haven't. We're just living on the edge of someone else's, like fleas on a dog's back. If the dog drowns, the fleas drown, too.”
― Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH