“You know, at times like this one feels, well, perhaps extinct animals should be left extinct.”

“Eagles are extinct," grumbled Morpurgo. "Perhaps they should have attacked the sky. It betrayed them.”

“Of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, nine hundred and sixty million are now extinct. We don't know why. Some by wanton extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that Homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest-lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time.”

“The room was a world, a pocket of the past where extinct animals could walk.”

“Just because you said dragon demons were extinct—""I said mostly extinct."Alec jabbed a finger toward him."Mostly extinct," he said, his voice trembling with rage, "is NOTEXTINCT ENOUGH.""I see," said Jace. "I'll just have them change the entry in the demonology textbook from 'almost extinct' to 'not extinct enough for Alec. He prefers his monsters really, really extinct.' Will that make you happy?”

“The moose will perhaps one day become extinct; but how naturally then, when it exists only as a fossil relic, and unseen as that, may the poet or sculptor invent a fabulous animal with similar branching and leafy horns, — a sort of fucus or lichen in bone, — to be the inhabitant of such a forest as this!”