“Look at the sky. Ask yourselves: Has the sheep eaten the flower, yes or no? And you will see how everything changes...”

“Look up at the sky. Ask yourself, 'Has the sheep eaten the flower or not?' And you'll see how everything changes...And no grown-up will ever understand how such a thing could be so important.”

“Has the sheep eaten the flower or not?”

“If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are a-bloom with flowers...”

“If a sheep eats bushes does it eat flowers too?A sheep eats whatever it finds.Even a flower with thorn?Even a flower with thorns.Then what's the good of thorns?”

“For millions of years flowers have been producing thorns. For millions of years sheep have been eating them all the same. And it's not serious, trying to understand why flowers go to such trouble to produce thorns that are good for nothing? It's not important, the war between the sheep and the flowers? It's no more serious and more important than the numbers that fat red gentleman is adding up? Suppose I happen to know a unique flower, one that exists nowhere in the world except on my planet, one that a little sheep can wipe out in a single bite one morning, just like that, without even realizing what he'd doing - that isn't important? If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself 'My flower's up there somewhere...' But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it's as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that isn't important?”

“He sat down. I sat down next to him. And after a silence, he spoke again. 'The stars are beautiful because of a flower you don't see...'I answered, 'Yes, of course.”