Watership Down

by Richard Adams

Who wants to hear about brave deeds when he’s ashamed of his own, and who likes an open, honest tale from someone he’s deceiving?

‘Animals don’t behave like men,’ he said. ‘If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill, they kill. But they don’t sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures’ lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality.’

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.