Bête Quotes

“I don’t recall all twelve points of the Great Animal Charter, but I know that the right to vote, to work, the right to welfare benefits and the creation of a set number of specifically animal MPs and MEPs was part of it. It was never going to happen, of course. I don’t suppose the animals believed it would pass; their intention was to provoke dissension amongst humanity.”
― Adam Roberts, Bête

“Talk is what we have, what makes us distinctive. Talk to us is what webs are to a spider, or speed to a gazelle.’

‘Talk is how we bring what’s inside our minds into the outside world,’ Albie said. ‘Animals have feelings and thoughts. Animals have always had feelings and thoughts – it’s just that only now have they been able to bring them out.”
― Adam Roberts, Bête

“We have been at war with the other creatures of this earth ever since the first human hunter set forth with spear into the primeval forest. Human imperialism has everywhere enslaved, oppressed, murdered and mutilated the animal peoples. All around us lie the slave camps we have built for our fellow creatures, factory farms and vivisection laboratories. Dachaus and Buchenwalds for the conquered species. We slaughter animals for our food, force them to perform silly tricks for our delectation, gun them down and stick hooks in them in the name of sport. We have torn up the wild places where once they made their homes. Speciesism is more deeply entrenched within us even than sexism, and that is deep enough.”
― Adam Roberts, Bête

“That’s a question so open-ended it gapes like a goatse,”
― Adam Roberts, Bête