Marcel Ayme Quotes

″‘Perhaps the elephant will turn back into a white hen,’ murmured Delphine. ‘After all, she only did it for the game. When we’ve stopped playing Noah’s Ark there won’t be any reason for her to go on being an elephant.‘”

″‘You must all behave like the cat. Look at that way he’s purring!’ It was quite true. The cat was purring as though nothing were happening, because he knew that the Flood was only a game.”

“Be quiet, pig, or I’ll tell the elephant to eat you!”

“They began to wonder if the Ark were really a game, and could almost believe that the Flood was real.”

“If the elephant had been able to get out, Father and Mother would certainly have been surprised at finding him wandering round the house, because there was no such animal in the village.”

“He was thinking that perhaps the voyage would be longer than the little girls expected, so that one day the food would run out; and because he was very fat, he was afraid of being eaten.”

“But in spite of all their pleading, the elephant was determined never to be a little white hen again. ‘It isn’t that I want to be unfriendly,’ he said, ‘but I think it’s much more fun being an elephant.‘”

“She thought she was still just a little hen, perched up very high, near the ceiling. But then she found that she had a trunk and ivory tusks, and four huge feet, and a thick, rough skin in which there were still a few white feathers.”

“I can’t tell you what a help it is to know that you trust me. And you must go on trusting me.”

“Delphine held herself back from running to the window, because after all she was the captain, and she must not show that she was frightened.”