Rats Quotes

“Hermes smiled. "I knew a boy once ... oh, younger than you by far. A mere baby, really."
Here we go again, George said. Always talking about himself.
Quiet! Martha snapped. Do you want to get set on vibrate?
Hermes ignored them. "One night, when this boy's mother wasn't watching, he sneaked out of their cave and stole some cattle that belonged to Apollo."
"Did he get blasted to tiny pieces?" I asked.
"Hmm ... no. Actually, everything turned out quite well. To make up for his theft, the boy gave Apollo an instrument he'd invented-a lyre. Apollo was so enchanted with the music that he forgot all about being angry."
So what's the moral?"
"The moral?" Hermes asked. "Goodness, you act like it's a fable. It's a true story. Does truth have a moral?"
"Um ..."
"How about this: stealing is not always bad?"
"I don't think my mom would like that moral."
Rats are delicious, suggested George.
What does that have to do with the story? Martha demanded.
Nothing, George said. But I'm hungry.
"I've got it," Hermes said. "Young people don't always do what they're told, but if they can pull it off and do something wonderful, sometimes they escape punishment. How's that?”
― Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters

“OK," Josh said evenly, "I've seen men made of mud, I guess I can accept spying rats. Do they talk?" he wondered aloud.
Don't be ridiculous," Flamel snapped, "They're rats."
Josh really didn't think it was a ridiculous suggestion.”
― Michael Scott, The Alchemyst

“Well, hello, Peter,” said Lupin pleasantly, as though rats frequently erupted into old school friends around him. “Long time, no see.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets. . . when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.”
― Charles Bukowski, Notes of a Dirty Old Man

“Despite all my rage
I am still just a rat in the cage.”
― Billy Corgan

“Rats! There goes the bell... oh, how I hate lunch hours! I always have to eat alone because nobody likes me... Peanut butter again... I wish that little red haired girl would come over, and sit with me. Wouldn’t it be great if she’d walk over here, and say, “May I eat lunch with you, Charlie Brown?” I’d give anything to talk with her... she’d never like me, though... I’m so blah and so stupid... she’d never like me... I wonder what would happen if I went over and tried to talk to her! Everyone would probably laugh... she’d probably be insulted someone as blah as I am tried to talk to her. I hate lunch hour... all it does is make me lonely... during class it doesn’t matter... I can’t even eat... Nothing tastes good... Rats! Nobody is ever going to like me... Lunch hour is the loneliest hour of the day!”
― Charles M. Schulz

“Hardly had the light been extinguished, when a peculiar trembling began
to affect the netting under which the three children lay.

It consisted of a multitude of dull scratches which produced a metallic
sound, as if claws and teeth were gnawing at the copper wire. This was
accompanied by all sorts of little piercing cries.

The little five-year-old boy, on hearing this hubbub overhead, and
chilled with terror, jogged his brother's elbow; but the elder brother
had already shut his peepers, as Gavroche had ordered. Then the little
one, who could no longer control his terror, questioned Gavroche, but in
a very low tone, and with bated breath:--

"Sir?"

"Hey?" said Gavroche, who had just closed his eyes.

"What is that?"

"It's the rats," replied Gavroche.

And he laid his head down on the mat again.

The rats, in fact, who swarmed by thousands in the carcass of the
elephant, and who were the living black spots which we have already
mentioned, had been held in awe by the flame of the candle, so long as
it had been lighted; but as soon as the cavern, which was the same
as their city, had returned to darkness, scenting what the good
story-teller Perrault calls "fresh meat," they had hurled themselves in
throngs on Gavroche's tent, had climbed to the top of it, and had begun
to bite the meshes as though seeking to pierce this new-fangled trap.

Still the little one could not sleep.

"Sir?" he began again.

"Hey?" said Gavroche.

"What are rats?"

"They are mice."

This explanation reassured the child a little. He had seen white mice in
the course of his life, and he was not afraid of them. Nevertheless, he
lifted up his voice once more.

"Sir?"

"Hey?" said Gavroche again.

"Why don't you have a cat?"

"I did have one," replied Gavroche, "I brought one here, but they ate
her."

This second explanation undid the work of the first, and the little
fellow began to tremble again.

The dialogue between him and Gavroche began again for the fourth time:--

"Monsieur?"

"Hey?"

"Who was it that was eaten?"

"The cat."

"And who ate the cat?"

"The rats."

"The mice?"

"Yes, the rats."

The child, in consternation, dismayed at the thought of mice which ate
cats, pursued:--

"Sir, would those mice eat us?"

"Wouldn't they just!" ejaculated Gavroche.

The child's terror had reached its climax. But Gavroche added:--

"Don't be afraid. They can't get in. And besides, I'm here! Here, catch
hold of my hand. Hold your tongue and shut your peepers!”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“But there was more to it than that. As the Amazing Maurice said, it was just a story about people and rats. And the difficult part of it was deciding who the people were, and who were the rats.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

“Humility is a virtue of the heavenly, not arrogance. Are we the most superior beast on earth? No, not in strength and not in intelligence. It is very arrogant to assume that we are the most intelligent species when we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Both rats and monkeys have been shown to learn from error, yet we have not. More people have died in the name of religion than any other cause on earth. Is massacring God’s creations really serving God – or the devil? And what father would want to see his children constantly divided and fighting? What God would allow a single human life to be sacrificed for monetary gain? Again, the Creator or the devil?”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“I will not join the rat race because I'm not a rat. And I will not blindly follow a specific faith because I'm not a bat. The only race I'll take part in is for humans being humane. It's called the human race, and sadly it's got the least participants.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“You dirty rat...”
― James Cagney

“And the rats eat my face. So what.”
― Sarah Kane, Cleansed

“The rat gave birth. Six little ones...cute baby rats... None of them are like Hitler.”
― Yoshihiro Tatsumi, The Push Man and Other Stories

“I'm fairly certain our gardens are rat-free."
"I don't know. Rats are pretty sneaky. Sometimes they even make it into elected positions. Sometimes if you let them get out of control they even become mayor.”
― Liz Braswell, Unbirthday

“If my love must be a rodent, then shall I be anything but a rat?”
― Lynne Jonell, Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat

“You want proof evolution is for real, don’t waste your time with fossils; just check out the New York City rat. They started out as immigrants, stowaways in some ship’s cargo hold. Only the survivors got to breed, and they’ve been improving with every new
litter. Smarter, faster, stronger. Getting ready to rule. Manhattan wouldn’t be the first island they took over.”
― Andrew Vachss, Another Life

“What sort of gods make rats and plagues and dwarfs?”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“I should mention, by the way, that LVR stands for Luminal Velocity Regulator. I suppose it could also stand for Large Venezeulan Rats, but in this case it does not.”
― Cuthbert Soup, Another Whole Nother Story

“The rats we met the size of small dogs and they watched us go by like they'd figured out that what People were for was feeding rats.”
― Sarah Monette, The Virtu

“There is the title of one book In Underground One Can Meet Only Rats. And I'd re-phrase, In Cosmos One Can Meet Only Mutants, besides, rats are mutants too there, in cosmos, therefore, I'd rather walk on the ground.”
― Lara Biyuts, The Sunless Parlour

“By living on our own terms. By being rats, not mice, work together and beat the system. I will not give up my friends for this system. In fact, my friendships will beat the system.”
― Chetan Bhagat, Five Point Someone: What Not to Do at IIT

“He loved to eat rats and cats.”
― Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis: A Medico-Legal Study

“He believed that people should emulate whales. He said that people had grown as small and crafty as rats , and that the days of taking slow, huge, beautiful strides had vanished, The age of giants was over.”
― Un-su Kim, The Plotters

“Are there no counterfeits of DON SANTO? Yes there are a few roaches. Don't we have Kamati ya roho chafu (committee of persons with dirty hearts)? Yes we got some rats around us. Are there people who love I? Oooooh yes lots of them. And I love you right back! C'est La vie!”
― DON SANTO

“Poor old Snuffles,' said Ron, breathing deeply. 'He must really like you, Harry... imagine having to live off rats.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“In addition, they say, not everyone in New Zealand is okay with strewing poison all over the land, or even support of the goals of the [invasive-species removal] project. 'The eradication of some introduced species is also contentious because some Maori regard them as culturally important,' they write. "the Pacific rat, for example, while targeted by Predator Free 2050, is protected on some Maori lands.”
― Emma Marris, Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World

“One night, in the warehouse of a grocery chain, I saw some egg-stealing rats at work. They worked in pairs. A small rat would straddle an egg and clutch it in his four paws. When he got a good grip on it, he'd roll over on his back. Then a bigger rat would grab him by the tail and drag him across the floor to a hole in the baseboard, a hole leading to a burrow.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Writing New York: A Literary Anthology

“There's a cat on the windowsill,
with a rat in its stomach,
that had eaten the cheese,
that my lover left behind,
the day she went away.

- Saudade”
― C. Sean McGee

“The majority of the crowd had looked human from a distance, but once she was among them, she had her doubts. Some were human shaped but had green or blue skin. A number had horns rising from their foreheads, short and pointed as antelopes'. One woman walked by with a rack of antlers that would do any stag proud, and small black birds seated on each tine, wearing silver collars around their necks.

Others were not even human shaped. A trio of boards in starched collars, walking on their hind legs, went grunting past. Six white rats, each nearly three feet tall, carried a palanquin on their shoulders. And who could guess what lay beneath the pale braids that covered that figure from head to toe?”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“Your god. Why a rat?”
Zale shrugged. “Why not a rat? Rats are smart and they travel with humans, but they are neither our servants nor our prey. They eat the food that we eat, they live within our homes. Who better to understand us?”
― T. Kingfisher, Swordheart