“All I had to do was stick my face into this gruesome mess and bite off the young sheep's testicles. Dag a hogget. I had good teeth. I put my nose into this awful-smelling mess, my teeth solidly around the balls of the six-month-old sheep, and took a bite while I held him upside down. My nose was in fur and ordure. I bit and spat out the product into a pile of what they called prairie oysters. We have them in America too: delicious to eat, but not delicious to remove. They said this was the most sanitary way to de-ball a sheep. After I was done, I passed the sheep onto the next man, who put a little coal tar on the same spot for purposes of cleansing and closing up the wound.The sheep never let out a bleat.”

“I once complained to my father that I didn’t seem to be able to do things the same way other people did. Dad’s advice? "Margo, don’t be a sheep. People hate sheep. They eat sheep.”

“Feed my sheep, feed my sheep," I repeated. "He didn't say, 'Feed my sheep after you check their ID.”

“Most of the afternoons I would pass looking out at the pasture. I soon began seeing things. A figure emerging from the birch woods and running straight in my direction. Usually it was the Sheep Man, but sometimes it was the Rat, sometimes my girlfriend. Other times it was the sheep with the star on it's back.”

“She cleared her throat once or twice, and said something about poor people should eat a lot of herrings, as they were most nutritious, also she had heard poor people eat heaps of sheeps' heads and she went on to ask if I ever cooked them. I said I would rather be dead than cook or eat a sheep's head; I'd seen them in butchers' shops with awful eyes and bits of wool sticking to their skulls. After that helpful hints for the poor were forgotten.”

“I want to have five or six wives, and a few dozen sheep, all for my pleasure. I should be a politician.”