“It's not a cat!' Flo insisted. 'It's a horrible stripy- thing - and it's got fangs, and... and...''She calls it Henry,' she said, as though this was calling the Prince of Darkness Fred. 'She says her sister left it to her in her. In her will!”

“Irma Nail, who lived next door to Gordon, was setting off as usual for her morning paper. She was not easily distracted from her routine, even by the apocalypse. She stepped out of her house in her purple rain boots, muttering about the freakish weather, and glanced up at the sky just as a wolf fell out of it.'Outrageous!' She snorted as it lay stunned at her feet. 'I've heard of it raining cats and dogs, but this is ridiculous!' and she stepped over the stricken beast, putting her umbrella up in case more wolves should tumble, uninvited, from the sky.”

“... she just had time to reflect that of all the many ways in which she had anticipated her final moments, crashing airborne into a pack of flying wolves seemed least likely...Meanwhile the pack of flying wolves had noticed something unusual.'What's that boss?' Said one of them, who was near the front. But their leader, Skoll, was too intent on opening his jaws wide enough to swallow the sun to hear.'Looks like a flying pink poodle,' the wolf went on, and this time Skoll did hear.'A flying pink poodle?' He said, with vast contempt. 'Give me a break Garm."'No boss, look,' Garm protested. 'It is a flying pink poodle...''I told you what would happen if you didn't take your altitude tablets.'But by now the other wolves were joining in... Skoll heaved a sigh of absolute exasperation. 'First of all,' he said, 'poodles can't fly. And they ain't pink. I-oh.' For now that he had turned he could see Flo, careening erratically towards them upside down with her eyes firmly shut... He had become, over the millennia, almost jaded to novelty. But now he was genuinely astonished. 'Wow," he said.”

“He's a gentle soul,' he told her. 'I can't see him put down, he wouldn't hurt a fly.' Indeed Boris wouldn't hurt a fly because in general flies were too fast for him.”

“He couldn't wait to get home from school, to play with Jenny 'till bedtime, when she went to sleep on his bed and both of them dreamed wonderful dreams all night, about a boy with a face like the sun and a small white dog gleaming like a star through the early-morning mist"-Sky Wolves, Livi Michael”

“And of course she's sad about losing her leg, but she says it's made her realise how many things she hasn't lost...it's like a millionaire who loses a thousand dollars- he's sad, but he's still not that bad off.”

“If she were religious, she would call it the soul. It is more than the sum of her intellect and her emotions, more than the sum of her experiences, though it runs like veins of brilliant metal through all three. It is an inner faculty that recognizes the animating mysteries of the world because it is made of the same substance”