“Although she was a widow (her husband had died only the preceding summer), Mrs. Frisby was able, through luck and hard work, to keep her family—there were four of them—happy and well fed.”
“Mrs. Frisby, it seems that you have more than repaid us for the help we gave you in moving your house. Just as your husband did once, you have saved us from a disaster: death or capture—we do not yet know which.”
“Birdbrain, thought Mrs. Frisby, and then recalled what her husband used to say: The size of the brain is no measure of its capacity. And well she might recall it, for the crow’s head was double the size of her own.”
“You can see why this would have been a dreadful thing for Jonathan to have to tell you. You never had the injections. That meant that while he stayed young, you would grow older, and older, and finally die. He loved you, and he could hardly stand that thought. Yet if it was distressing to him — he thought — how much more painful it would be to you! That is what he could not bring himself to tell you.”
″‘If the ants can do it, Nicodemus says, if the bees can do it, so can we.’
‘Do what?’
‘Why, live without stealing, of course. That’s the whole idea. That’s the Plan.‘”