Mom

“This was a freedom essential to the health even of a character so little susceptible of morbid influences as that of Phoebe. The old house [with dry rot in its structure and perhaps also in its inhabitants];...it was not good to breathe no other atmosphere that that.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorn

“The trouble with Grace, she thought, is that she is so literal. But that was the trouble with most people, when it came down to it; there were very few who enjoyed flights of fantasy, and to have that sort of mind--one which enjoyed dry with and understood the absurd--left one in a shrinking minority.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments

“...the thought crossed her mind that a bed was really a very strange thing-a human nest, really, where our human fragility made its nightly demands for comfort and cosseting”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
― Robert A. Heinlein