“Even as a child, I had walked down streets reading novels, waiting for...” — Alissa Quart Quote

“Even as a child, I had walked down streets reading novels, waiting for my feet to get stuck in tar as I crossed the road, like the absent-minded animal in a Richard Scarry kid's book.”

“I go to see films at the multiplex because they are not good films, and so I don't have to think about things like death, social oppression, or yes, my fertility, while I watch them.”

“When I was a young child, professional aspiration was synonymous to me with the clatter of my mother's high-heeled boots as she went off to teach each 1970s weekday morning, carrying her graded blue books under her arm.”

“In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.”

“Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?”

“I really love learning about animals. I pull from a deck of spirit animal cards. You pull one, and it's about 50 or 60 different animals, and then that day you read whichever animal you pull. And it kind of gives you insight.”