PAM BROWN

A horse is the projection of peoples' dreams about themselves - strong, powerful, beautiful - and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existence.

Kittens are wide-eyed, soft and sweet. With needles in their jaws and feet.

A cat can maintain a position of curled up somnolence on your knee until you are nearly upright. To the last minute she hopes your conscience will get the better of you and you will settle down again.

The courage of very ordinary people is all that stands between us and the dark.

A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often - just to save it from drying out completely.

Odd how much it hurts when a friend moves away- and leaves behind only silence.

For every person who has ever lived there has come, at last, a spring he will never see. Glory then in the springs that are yours.

One small cat changes coming home to an empty house to coming home.

If your sister is in a tearing hurry to go out and cannot catch your eye, she's wearing your best sweater.

Loss leaves us empty - but learn not to close your heart and mind in grief. Allow life to replenish you. When sorrow comes it seems impossible - but new joys wait to fill the void.

You are asleep. Deep, deep asleep - and then the world caves in. The cat has leapt from the top window onto your stomach. He is saturated. He is hungry. He taps you into full wakefulness with a sodden paw "Could you open a can?"

We have become a society where the artist is regarded as a self-indulgent superfluity, and the person who juggles stocks and shares is an essential part of the economy.

Be wary of the horse with a sense of humor.

Dads are most ordinary men turned by love into heroes, adventurers, story-tellers, singers of songs.

Love is to understand, at last, the suffering of another.

Riding turns 'I wish into 'I can'.

Bears being sent through the mail should never be squashed up to make them fit. It gives them indigestion.

You took me to adventure and to love. We two have shared great joy and great sorrow. And now I stand at the gate of the paddock watching you run in an ecstasy of freedom, knowing you will return to stand quietly, loyally, beside me.

The first step to wisdom is to be sure one says and does what one believes.

Sisters never quite forgive each other for what happened when they were five.

It's hard to be responsible, adult and sensible all the time. How good it is to have a sister whose heart is as young as your own.

If you've only one breath left, use it to say thank you.

Brooks too wide for our leaping, hedges far to high. Loads too heavy for our moving, burdens too cumbersome for us to bear. Distances far beyond our journeying. The horse gave us mastery.

It should be possible to exist with only a short shelf of books, to read and give away. After all - we may not open a book, once read, for ten years or more. But the act of reading has made it part of us - to relinquish it would be to lose an extension of our being.

A cat likes to hear you calling him. He sits in a bush a yard from your shoes - and listens.