“Goats," said Maxwell Hyde, "are a special case. Mad as hatters, all of them.”

“After that, all the while Millie was eating the pudding... we both tore Christopher's character to shreds. It was wonderful fun.... He drove everyone mad in Chrestomanci Castle by insisting on silk shirts and exactly the right kind of pajamas. 'And he could get them right anyway by magic,' Millie told me, 'if he wasn't too lazy to learn how.... But the thing that really annoys me is the way he never bothers to learn a person's name. If a person isn't important to him, he always forgets their name.'When Millie said this, I realized that Christopher had never once forgotten my name...”

“...and said grace in Welsh. It was all rolling, thundering language.”

“I got myself to the middle and sort of groped along there with one hand out in front.And something groped back at me.It sort of dabbed at me, whatever it was, wet and cold and desperate. It groped at my hand and then at my face. I went backward with a shriek and sat down in a puddle. It had felt like a snake. But the thing shrieked and went backward too. The ground shook under my behind. I sat staring, shaking all over. There was just enough gray light for me to pick out what seemed to be a couple of small trees, with the snake coiling this way and that down from them. I thought I must have walked into a forest."Oh, please!" said the forest--unless it was the snake. "Help me! I'm lost! I'm stuck!""What kind of a snake are you?" I said."I'm not a snake! I'm an elephant!" it said despairingly.Elephants that talked now! I thought. But I'd already met a panther that I could understand, so, why not? It was all one long, mad dream."It's more like a nightmare, I think," the elephant objected. "And I"m not exactly talking. You must be good at picking up four-legged thoughts. Please help me!”

“But I discovered that people like me -- they do, you know, if you like them -- and then it was all right.”

“Howl backed into the door to shut it and leaned there in a tragic attitude. "Look at you all!" he said. "Ruin stares me in the face. I slave all day for you. And not one of you, even Calcifer, can spare time to say hello!"Calcifer said, "I never do say hello.""Is something wrong?" asked Sophie."That's better," Howl said. "Some of you are pretending to notice me at last. Yes, something is wrong.”

“I am not,' he said, 'having that lummock-de-troll glunching about this place! Trod on all my tomatoes, he did, last year.”