Adams, Richard

Watership Down

p.xiv – “But rabbits would need a single word– a word they quite often needed to use, for example, silflay. Again, tharn was a rabbit word meaning stupefied or paralyzed with fear.”
p.xiv – “I never though of the book becoming a bestseller, but I did think in terms of a modest hardback, which I could give to my daughters, saying, ‘There you are. This is the book you wanted me to write.’ "
p. xv – “His name, I asw from the review, was Rex Collings. I guessed that this was a fairly small firm, without much capital, but it was worth a try. I got in touch with him, and submitted the fair typescript.”

Part I: The Journey

p.6 – " ‘I’ll tell you, if ever I get into the Owsla, I’ll treat outskirters with a bit of decency.’ "
p.9 – " ‘Hazel– the danger, the bad thing. It hasn’t gone away. It’s here– all round us. Don’t tell me to forget about it and go to sleep. We’ve got to go away before it’s too late.’ "
p.13 – “What am I lying here for? … We are lying here as though we had a chance of enjoying a quiet time… Am I waiting until I become a little older?”
p.14 – " ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said to the Chief Rabbit. Tell me, is it a sort of tremendous hoax to make yourself important, or is it true?’ "
p.16 – “Before such people can act together, a kind of telepathic feeling has to flow through them and ripen to the point when they all knowthat they are ready to begin.”
p.25 – “Since entering the wood they had been in severe anxiety. Several were almost tharn– that is, in that state of staring, glazed paralysis that omes over terrified or exhausted rabbits, so that they sit and watch their enemies– weasels or humans– approach to take their lives.”
p.25 – " ‘Yes, all right, we’ll rest here,’ he said. ‘Let’s go in among this fern. Come on, Dandelion, tell us a story. I know you’re handy that way. Pipkin here can’t wait to hear it.’ "
p.31 – “Hazel realized wearily that Bigwig was probably going to be troublesome. He was certainly no coward, but he was likely to remain steady only as long as he could see his way clear and be sure of what to do. To him, perplexity was worse than danger; and when he was perplexed he usually grew angry.”
p.47 – “The lendri, the dog, the crow, the marksman– they had been lucky to escape them. How long would their luck hold? Would they really be able to travel on as far as Fiver’s high place– wherever it might be?”
p.51 – “Hawkbit looked sly and shifty. ‘We don’t believe you know where we are going,’ he said. ‘You didn’t know about the road, did you? And you don’t know what there is in front of us.’ "
p.52 – “Hazel looked at the dim, far-off hills. Obviously, the idea of trying to reach them was out of the question. It might well prove to be all they could do to find their way across the heather to some quiet field or copse bank like those they had been used to.”
p.54 – " ‘Now Bigwig’s put their backs up, and they’ll think they’ve got to go on because he makes them. I want them to go on because they can see it’s the only thing to do. There are too few of us for giving orders and biting people. Frith in a fog! Isn’t there enough trouble and danger already?’ "
pp.55-56 – “All was confusion, ignorance, clambering and exhaustion.”
p.56 – “At last he saw the first of the dawn, like light faintly perceived round a corner at the far end of an unknown burrow; and in the same moment a yellowhammer sang. Hazel’s feelings were like those which might pass through the mind of a defeated general. Where were his followers exactly? He hoped, not far away. But were they? All of them? Where had he led them? What was he going to do now? What if an enemy appeared at this moment? He had answers to none of these questions and no spirit left to force himself to think about them.”
p.58 – “To come to the end of a time of anxiety and fear! To feel the cloud that hung over us lift and disperse– the cloud that dulled the heart and made happiness no more than a memory! This at least is one joy that must have been known by almost every living creature.”
p.58 – “Hopelessness and reluctance are blown away like a fog and the dub solitude where they crept, a place desolate as a crack in the ground, opens like a rose and stretches to the hills and the sky.”
p.63 – “Nevertheless, he did not seem aggressive. On the contrary, there was a curious, rather unnatural gentleness about the way in which he waited for them to come nearer.”
p.63 – “He had not meant to be the first to speak, but something in the other’s silence compelled him.”
p.67 – “The heavy work has all been done by countless great-grandmothers adn their mates. All the faults have been puot right and everything in use is of proved value.”
p.74 – " ‘After last night I’m sure of my own lot. We wouldn’t be here at all if we weren’t handy in a pinch. These other fellows will just have to get to know us. They don’t seem to dislike us, anyway.’ "
p.74 – “Just as a battle begins in a state of equilibrium between the two sides, which gradually alters one way or the other until it is clear that the balance has tilted so far that the issue can no longer be in doubt– so this gathering of rabbits in the dark, beginning with hesitant approaches, silences, pauses, movements, crouchings side by side and all manner of tentative appraisals, slowly moved, like a hemispere of the world into summer, to a warmer, brighter region of mutual liking and approval, until all felt sure that they had nothing to fear.”
p.79 – “Courts and camps are the only places to learn the world in… Take the tone of the company that you are in.”
p.81 – " ‘They all seem terribly sad. I can’t think why, when they’re so big and strong and have this beautiful warren. But they put me in mind of trees in November.’ "
p.86 – " ‘He won’t know how to shiver in a week or two,’ said Hawkbit, with his mouth full. ‘I feel so much better for this! I’d follow you anywhere, Hazel. I wasn’t myself in the heather that night. It’s bad when you know you can’t get underground. I hope you understand.’ "
p.88 – “Fiver seemed to grow even smaller as he flattened himself on the hard earth. ‘I’m a fool to try to argue,’ he said miserably. ‘Hazel– dear old Hazel– it’s simply that I know there’s something unnatural and evil twisted all round this place. I don’t know what it is, so no wonder I can’t talk about it. I keep getting near it, though.”
p.101 – " ‘No,’ said a new voice from the further end of the hall, beyond Cowslip. ‘Rabbits need dignity and, above all, the will to accept their fate.’ "
p.105 – " ‘Be quiet. I was going to be angry, but you’re obviously so much upset that it would be pointless. But what you are going to do now is to come underground with the two of us and sleep. Come on! And don’t say any more for the moment.’ "
p.108 – “But now, as he saw Fiver, small and familiar, incapable of hurting anyone or of concealing what he felt, trembling in the wet grass, either from fear or from cold, his anger melted away.”
p.109 – “… ‘But now– well, I’ve alwasy found that there was something in what Fiver had to say. For the last two days I’ve refused to listen to him and I still think he’s out of his senses. Bit I haven’t the heart to drive him back to the warren. I really believe that for some reason or other the place is frightening him out of his wits.’”

Part II: On Watership Down

p.121 – “What is now proved was once only imagin’d.”
p.122 – “Since leaving the warren of the snares they had become warier, shrewder, a tenacious band who understood each other and worked together.”
p.123 – “There was no more questioning of Bigwig’s strength, Fiver’s insight, Blackberry’s wits or Hazel’s authority.”
p.125 – “Rabbits above ground, unless they are in proved, familiar surroundings close to their holes, live in continual fear. If it grows intense enough they can become glazed and paralyzed by it– ’tharn’ to use their own word.”
p.129 – “The holes certainly were rough– ‘Just right for a lot of vagabonds like us,’ said Bigwig– but the exhausted and those who wander in strange country are not particular about their quarters. At least there was room for twelve rabbits and the burrows were dry.”
p.139 – “Although he had decided on his own initiative to arrest Bigwig, he had not the reputation of being vindictive. He was, rather, a stander of no nonsense who knew when duty was done and did it himself. Sound, unassuming, conscientious, a bit lacking in the rabbit sense of mischief, he was something of the born second-in-command.”
p.151 – " ‘It comes from men,’ said Holly. ‘All other elil do what they have to do and Frith moves them as he moves us. They live on the earth and they need food. Men will never rest till they’ve spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals. But I’d better go on with theis tale of mine.’ "
p.157 – " ‘That wasn’t why they destroyed the warren. It was just because we were in their way. They killed us to suit themselves.’ "
p.160 – " ‘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.’ "
p.160 – “After a silence, he added, ‘You can imagine what it means to Bluebell and me to find ourselves underground, among friends. It wasn’t I who tried to arrest you, Bigwig– that was another rabbit long, long ago.”
p.161 – “They have a certain quality which it would not be accurate to describe as callousness or indifference. It is, rather, a blessedly circumscribed imagination and an intuitive feeling that Life is Now.”
p.163 – " ‘Now, elil can’t do us good, obviously, but there are many creatures that aren’t elil– birds, mice, yonil and so on. Rabbits don’t usually have much to do with them, but their enemies are our enemies, for the most part. I think we ought to do all we can to make these creatures friendly. It might turn out to be well worth the trouble.’ "
p.164 – " ‘Never mind,’ said Holly. ‘I’m still one of the lucky ones.’ "
p.182 – " ‘What’s the idea, Hazel?’ said Silver. ‘That’s a savage brute. You can’t make a friend out of that.’ "
p.182 – " ‘You may be right,’ said Hazel. ‘But what’s the good of a blue tit or a robin to us? They don’t fly any distance. We need a big bird.’ "
p.184 – “The astonished rabbits obeyed him, grumbling. Hazel’s authority was put to something of a test, but held firm with the support of Bigwig. Although he had no idea what Hazel had in mind, Bigwig was fascinated by the strength and courage of the bird and had already accepted the idea of taking it in, without troubling himself about the reason.”
p.187 – “But now, in the evening sunshine on the friendly, empty down, with a good burrow at his back and the grass turning to pellets in his belly, Hazel knew that he was lonely for a doe.”
p.188 – “Hazel’s anxiety and the reason for it were soon known to all the rabbits and there was not one who did not realize what they were up against. There was nothing very startling in what he had said. He was simply the one– as a Chief Rabbit ought to be– through whom a strong feeling, latent throughout the warren, had come to the surface.”
p.193 – “Hazel told Kehaar’s news and a long, disorderly, intermittent discussion began. This was their way of reaching a conclusion. The fact that there was a warren two or three days’ journey to the south flickered and oscillated down among them as a penny wavers down through deep water, moving one way and the other, shifting, vanishing, reappearing, but always sinking toward the firm bottom. Hazel let the talk run on as long as it would, until at last they dispersed and slept.”
p.197 – “A spirit of happy mischief entered into Hazel. He felt as he had on the morning when they crossed the Enborne and he had set out alone and found the beanfield. He was confident and ready for adventure.”
p.199 – “There are times when we know for a certainty that all is well. A batsman who has played a fine innings will say afterward that he felt he could not miss the ball, and a speaker or an actor, on his lucky day, can sense his audience carrying him as though he were swimming in miraculous, buoyant water.”
p.203 – “Hazel realized that although they were glad to talk to him and welcomed his visit because it brought a little excitement and cahnge into their monotonous life, it was not within their capacity to take a decision and act on it. They did not know how to make up their minds.”
p.207 – " ‘But if Holly’s successful we shall soon have plenty of does: and from all I’ve ever heard of hutch rabbits, they don’t take easily to wild life. The truth is, you’re just a silly show off.’ "
p.209 – " ‘If it comes to that, I’ve no idea what’s happening to Holly and the others. It might be good or bad. But there’s something that frightens me about you yourself, Hazel: just you, not any of the others. You’re all alone, sharp and clear, like a dead branch against the sky.’ "
p.209 – " ‘I’ll be snared if I wait for Holly. Can’t you see that the very thing I want is to have these does here when he comes back? But look, Fiver, I’ll tell you what. I’ve come to trust you so much that I’ll take the greatest care. In fact, I won’t even go into the farmyard myself. I’ll stay outside, at the top of the lane: and if that’s not meeting your fears halfway, then I don’t know what is.’ "
p.215 – “When several creatures– men or animal– have worked together to overcome something offering resistance and have at last succeeded, there follows often a pause– as though they felt the propriety of paying respect to the adversary who has put up so good a fight. The great tree falls, splitting, cracking, rushing down in leaves to the final, shuddering blow along the ground. Then the foresters are silent, and do not at once sit down.”
p.230 – “When a child is told, for the first time in his life, that a person he has known is dead, although he does not disbelieve it, he may will fail to comprehend it and later ask– perhaps more than once– where the dead person is and when he is coming back.”
p.230 – “Does who are upset and on edge tend to be infertile; and how were these does to make themselves at home in strange conditions and a place where everyone was lost so poorly in his thoughts? They would die, perhaps, or wander away. He buckled once more to the task of explaining that he was sure better times lay ahead– and as he did so, felt himself the least convinced of any.”
p.233 – " ‘Efrafa is a big warren– a good deal bigger than the one we came from– the Threarah’s, I mean. And the one fear of every rabbit in it is that men are going to find them and infect them with the white blindness. The whole warren is orgnaized to conceal its existence. The holes are all hidden and the Owsla have every rabbit in the place under orders. You can’t call your life your own: and in return you have safety– if it’s worth having at the price you pay.’ "
p.236 – " ‘Things can’t go on like this– the system’s breaking down. But it doesn’t do to be heard talking about it.’ "
p.237 – " ‘I said that seemed very hard. Our request aws surely a reasonable one. Adn I was just going to ask them to consider one or two things from our point of view, when another of the Councillors– a very old rabbit– said, ‘You seem to thing you’re here to argue with us and drive a bargain. But we’re the ones to say what you’re going to do.’ ’ "
pp.238-239 – " ‘I’d been watching Captain Bugloss and he struck me as a nice enough fellow, conscientious and a bit weak and rather harassed by having more to do than he could really cope with.’ "
p.242 – " ‘We’ve lost Hazel: the worst thing that could have happened. Some of you asked me earlier this evening if I would be Chief Rabbit. I’m glad to know you trust me, but I’m completely done in and I can’t possibly take it on yet. I feel as dry and empty as an autumn puffball– I feel as though the wind could blow my fur away.’ "
p.244 – " ‘How does Fiver know what he knows?’ "
p.247 – " ‘Well, there’s another place– another country, isn’t there? We go there when we sleep; at other times, too; and when we die. El-ahrairah comes and goes between the two as he wants, I suppose, but I could never quite make that out, from the tales. Some rabbits will tell you it’s all easy there, compared with the waking dangers that they understand. But I think that only shows that they don’t know much about it. It’s a wild place, and very unsafe. And where are we really– there or here?’ "
p.249 – " ‘I know what we’ve got to do,’ said Hazel, ‘but I still can’t see how. We’ve got to go back and get some does out of Efrafa.’ "
p.250 – " ‘Yes. And this trick, Blackberry, is going to be devised by you.’ "

Part III: Efrafa

p.262 – “He knew that they were afraid, for he was afraid himself. Indeed, he guessed that they, like himself, could not be free from the thought of Efrafa and its grim Owsla. But working against this fear was their longing and need to find more does and the knowledge that there were plenty of does in Efrafa.”
p.270 – " ‘Now, as you all know, the Black Rabbit of Inlé is fear and everlasting darkness. He is a rabbit, but he is that cold, bad dream from which we can only entreat Lord Frith to save us today and tomorrow. When the snare is set in the gap, the Black Rabbit knows where the peg is driven; and when the weasel dances, the Black Rabbit is not far off.’ "
p.273 – " ‘I think many things are left out, if only the truth could be known,’ said Dandelion, ‘for no one can say what happens in that country where El-ahrairah went of his own accord and we do not.’ "
p.277 – " ‘When Rabscuttle was gone, El-ahrairah forced himself to think clearly. The Black Rabbit would not accept his life. Also, it was plain that he himself would never be able to win any sort of wager against him: he might as well try to run a race across a sheet of ice. But if the Black Rabbit did not hate him, why did he inflict these sufferings upon him? To destroy his courage and make him give up and go away. But why not simply send him away? And why wait, before hurting him, till he himself proposed a wager and lost it? The answer came to him suddenly. These shadows had no power either to send him away or to hurt him, except with his own consent. They would not help him, no. They would seek possession of his will and break it if they could. But supposing that he could find among them something that would save his people, could they stop him from taking it away?’ "
p.277 – " ‘They turned and stared, to make him afraid, but El-ahrairah was past being afraid and he stared back at them, wondering what they had in mind to persuade him to lose.’ "
p.281 – " ‘It was all a very wicked thing,’ said another doe. ‘Shameful, really. If nobody fought in wars, there wouldn’t be any, would there? But you can’t get old rabbits to see that.’ "
pp.281-282 – " ‘Wisdom is found on the desolate hillside, El-ahrairah, where none comes to feed, and the stony bank where the rabbit scratches a hole in vain.’ "
p.291 – “Fretting, he waited for Kehaar. Soon he had become as tense and nervous as he had ever been in his life. He was beginning to believe that after all he might have been rash.”
p.293 – “When Marco Polo came at last to Cathay, sever hundred years ago, did he not feel– and did his heart not falter as he realized– that this great and splendid capital of an empire had had its being all hte years of his life and far longer, and that he had been ignorant of it? That it was in need of nothing from him, from Venice, from Europe? That it was full of wonders beyond his understanding? That his arrival was a matter of no importance whatever? We know that he felt these things, and so has many a traveller in foreign parts who did not know what he was going to find. There is nothing that cuts you down to size like coming to some strange and marvelous place where no one even stops to notice that you stare about you.”
p.303 – “Like an obelisk towards which the principal streets of a town converge, the strong will of a proud spirit stands prominent and commanding in the middle of the art of war.”
p.306 – “The Wide Patrols began as mere forays or raids, led by Woundwort, into the surrounding country. He would simply pick four or five of the Owsla and take them out to look for trouble. On the first occasion they were lucky enough to find and kill a sick owl that had eaten a mouse that had eaten poison-dressed seed corn. On the next, they came upon two hlessil whom they compelled to return with them to join the warren. Woundwort was no mere bully. He knew how to encourage other rabbits and to fill them with a spirit of emulation.”
p.309 – “He would have gone himself, but with the recent disciplinary troubles in the warren he could not take the risk; and Campion could hardly be spared jus now. No– infuriating as it was, the strangers were best forgotten for the moment.”
p.313 – " ‘When something like that happens, it happens like lightning and it isn’t always planned: sometimes it’s more like a frenzy. A rabbit tears away on impulse and if you don’t knock him over quick, the next thing you know three more will be off after him. The only safe way is to watch all the time when they’re above ground and do you won relaxing when you can. After all, that’s what we’re here for– that and the patrols.’ "
p.313 – “What I do is to set three or four of them to dig a new trough in the ditch every day, as a punishment. You can nearly always find someone to punish if you try hard enough.”
p.317 – “It seemed to Bigwig that the answers he got were not particularly warm or friendly, but he did not know whether to put that down to dislike of Chervil or merely to the lack of spirit that seemed to be common to the rank and file in Efrafa.”
p.320 – “It struck him that these does were not far from the end of their powers. A wild animal that feels that it no longer has any reason to live reaches in the end a point when its remaining energies may actually be directed toward dying.”
p.320 – “It was this state of mind that Bigwig had mistakenly attributed to Fiver in the warren of the snares. Since then his judgment had matured. He felt that despair was not far from these does; and from all that he had heard of Efrafa, both from Holly and from Chervil, he could understand why. He knew that the effects of overcrowding and tension in a warren show themselves first in does. They become infertile and aggressive. But if aggression cannot mend their troubles, then often they begin to drift toward the only other way out.”
p.322 – “Bigwig was beginning to realize that in this place nobody was told more than was good for him, or got to know much except what was before his nose.”
p.324 – “It occurred to him that perhaps he might start his venture from the other end– by persuading some of the does to join him and working out a plan afterward, perhaps with their help.”
p.326 – “When he had finished, Hyzenthlay made no reply and he could not tell whether she was considering all that he had said or whether fear and disbelief had so troubled her that she did not know what to say. Did she think he was a spy trying to trap her? Did she perhaps wish only that he would let her go away?”
p.327 – " ‘My courage– my spirit: it’s so much less than it was. I’m afraid to let you rely on me.’ "
p.327 – " ‘The General said that no one else would have the chance to run away. We were to be split up among the Marks, no more than two to each Mark. I don’t know why they left Thethuthinnang and me together. Perhaps they didn’t stop to think. Efrafa’s like that, you know. The order was ‘Two to each Mark,’ so as long as the order was carried out it didn’t particularly matter which two. Now I’m frightened and feel the Council are always watching.’ "
p.330 – “When she had gone, Bigwig felt desparately tired and lonely. He tried to hold in his mind that his friends were not far off and that he would see them again in less than a day. But he knew that all Efrafa lay between himself and Hazel. His thougts broke up into the dismal fancies of anxiety. He fell into a half-dream, in which Captain Campion turned into a seagull and flew screaming over the river, until he woke in panic: and dozed again, to see Captain Chervil driving Blackavar before him toward a shining wire in the grass. And over all, as big as a horse in a field, aware of all that passed from one end of the world to the other, brooded the gigantic figure of General Woundwort. At last, worn out with his apprehensiona, he passed into a deep sleep where even his fear could not follow, and lay without sound or movement in the solitary burrow.”
p.335 – “He wandered across the Crixa, found himself in the middle of the ni-Frith silflay with the Left Hind Mark and went underground with them. Their officers shared a single large burrow and here he met some experienced veterans and listened with interest to their stories of Wide Patrols and other exploits. In the mid-afternoon he came back to the Near Hind relaxed and confident, and slept until one of the sentries woke him for silflay.”
p.341 – “Bigwig was close to utter nervous exhaustion. Since leaving General Woundwort, he had become more and more deeply entangled in all the age-old terrors of the conspirator. How much had Woundwort discovered? Clearly, there was no information that failed to reach him. He knew that Hazel and the rest had come from the north and crossed the iron road. He knew about the fox. He knew that a gull, which should have been far away at this time of year, was hanging round Efrafa and that he, Bigwig, had deliberately been near it. He knew that Bigwig had made a friend of Hyzenthlay. How long could it be before he took the final step of fitting all these things together? Perhaps he had already done so and was merely waiting to arrest them in his own time?”

Part IV: Hazel-rah

p.369 – “Most of the rabbits had very little idea of what was happening. The Efrafan does had never seen a river and it would certainly have been beyond Pipkin or Hawkbit to explain to them that they were on a boat. They– and nearly all the others– had simply trusted Hazel and done as they were told. But all– bucks and does alike– realized that Woundwort and his followers had vanished.”
p.384 – “Blackavar, proud of his father, had grown up with the resolve to become an officer in the Owsla. But together with this– and paradoxically– there had come to him from his mother a certain resentment against Efrafa and a feeling that they should have no more of him than he cared to give them.”
p.385 – “Hazel, who was ready to accept advice from anybody when he thought it was good, listened to most of what he said and was content to leave it to Bigwig– for whom, naturally, Blackavar entertained a tremendous respect– to see that he did not overreach himself in his warm-hearted, rather candid zeal.”
p.392 – “The promise of an end to the journey that night and the thought that they had escaped both the fox and the patrol made them eager and responsive.”
p.394 – “The does, who had never dug in their lives before, enjoyed the work. Both Hyzenthlay and Thethuthinnang told Hazel that they had had no idea how much of their frustration and unhappiness in Efrafa had been due simply to not being allowed to dig.”
p.395 – “The contentment of the does spread to everyone else, until one evening Hazel remarked that he felt a perfect fraud as Chief Rabbit, for there were no problems and hardly a dispute to be settled.”
p.399 – " ‘But what good will this be to us, master?’ said Rabscuttle. ‘I don’t know yet,’ said El-ahrairah. ‘But some good it will surely be, if the rats don’t get it. Come home now, though. It’s getting dark.’ "
p.412 – " ‘You don’t know these Efrafans,’ said Blackavar. ‘My mother used to tell me what happened at Nutley Copse. It would be better to go now.’ ‘Well, go on, then,’ answered Hazel. ‘I’m not stopping you. And I’m not leaveing this warren. It’s my home.’ "
p.421 – “At that moment, in the sunset on Watership Down, there was offered to General Woundwort the opportunity to show whether he was really the leader of vision and genius which he believed himself to be, or whether he was no more than a tyrant with the courage and cunning of a pirate. For one beat of his pulse the lame rabbit’s idea shone clearly before him. He grasped it and realized what it meant. The next, he had pushed it way from him.”
p.424 – “But, apart from this secret anxiety, he felt that his reputation depended on a fighting victory. He had brought his Owsla to get at these rabbits, knock them down and beat them. A seige would be a miserable anticlimax. Also, he wanted to get back to Efrafa as soon as he could. Like most warlords, he was never very confident about what was going on behind his back.”
p.426 – “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. But what else was there for any of them to do? At least Bigwig’s perparation would keep the others busy and perhaps do something to dispel the silent fear that filled all the warren.”
p.427 – “Seeing him in good heart, the others set aside their fear as best they could and did as he told them, enlarging the burrows beyond the south end of the Honeycoumb and piling up the soft earth in the entry runs until what had been a collonnade began to become a solid wall.”
p.427 – “Had they come over the common, among the shining wires, through the thunderstorm, the culverts on the great river, to die at the claws of General Woundwort? It was not the death they deserved; it was not the right end of the clever track they had run. But what could stop Woundwort? What could save them now?”
p.441 – “What he had learned from all his experience of fighting was that nearly always there are those who want to fight and those who do not but feel they cannot avoid it.”
p.450 – “With a sort of weary, dull surprise, Woundwort realized that he was afraid. He did not want to attack Thlayli again. He knew, with flinching certainty, that he was not up to it.”
p.452 – " ‘I am sorry for you with all my heart. But you cannot blame us, for you came to kill us if you could.’ "
p.465 – “For rabbits, winter remains what it was for men in the middle ages– hard, but bearable by the resourceful and not altogether without compensations.”
p.468 – " ‘Bigwig was right when he said he wasn’t like a rabbit at all,’ said Holly. ‘He was a fighting animal– fierce as a rat or a dog. He fought because he actually felt safer fighting than running. He was brave, all right. But it wasn’t natural; and that’s why it was bound to finish him in the end. He was trying to do something that Frith never meant any rabbit to do. I believe he’d have hunted like the elil if he could.’ "