“Only a friend or a giraffe would stick his neck out for you. But only a giraffe would eat all the leaves off your tree so he could peek in your second story bedroom window.”

“Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If in your bold creative way you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.”

“Does the giraffe know what he's for? Or care? Or even think about his place in things? A giraffe has a black tongue twenty-seven inches long and no vocal cords. A giraffe has nothing to say. He just goes on giraffing.”

“All you do is to look / At a page in this book / Because that's where we always will be. / No book ever ends / When it's full of your friends / The Giraffe and the Pelly and me.”

“There was a knock on the bedroom door. “Matt?”Fuck. “Nope.Silence. “Would you be the owner of the leather pants?”“Yep.”She paused briefly. “I’m going to pass these through the door. You have exactly thirty seconds to pull them on, make yourself presentable and get your ass out here.”“Do I have any other options?”“Only if Matt’s got a window.”He looked at the window longingly. The thirty-six-story drop with no fire escape might be less painful, but he decided there was no avoiding it. “Understood.”

“Time often is forgiving and dismissive of the influences, because they recede. We look at Sgt. Pepper and we go "wow! How did they ever think that up?" but of course, if you got into Paul McCartney's bedroom, found his record collection at the time, you would find out. But the clues are gone. It's like evolution: there are certain pure situations that hang around longer, but the ones that got them there don't have time to leave fossils. We have a giraffe, we have a horse. But where's the horse with the long neck? The link species disappear.”