The Mouse and His Child Quotes

“Then, with his big broken shoes printing his footsteps in the fresh snow, he solemnly danced in a circle, swinging his empty arms up and down. A little black-and-white spotted dog trotting past stopped and sat down to look at him, and for a moment the man and the dog were the only two creatures on the street not moving in a fixed direction.”

“This place is a toyshop, and you are toy mice. People are going to come and buy you for children, because it’s almost a time called Christmas.”

″‘What happens when they buy you?’ he asked her. ‘That, of course, is outside of my experience,’ said the elephant, ‘but I should think that one simply goes out into the world and does whatever one does. One dances or balances a ball, as the case may be.‘”

“How far away that other dollhouse seemed now! How far away that other tea party with its elegant ladies and gentleman, and the elephant he had wanted for a mama! The mouse child was on the job and he knew it, but he began to cry.”

“Everything must, in one way or another, go. One does what one is wound to do. It is expected of me that I walk up and down in front of my house; it is expected of you that you drink tea. And it is expected of this young mouse that he go out into the world with his father and dance in a circle.”

″‘Will you be my mama?’ said the child, ‘and will you sing to me all the time? And can we all stay here together and live in the beautiful house where the party is and not go out into the world?‘”

“The sound of the living room clock striking midnight could not reach them; they never had permission to speak at all, and they lay in silence until another year had passed and they stood once more beneath the tree.”

“Their patent leather shoes had been lost in the trash can; their blue velveteen trousers hung wrinkled and awry; their fur had come unglued in several places, but the mouse and his child were whole again.”

“The tramp set the mouse and his child down at the edge of the road and wound up the father. ‘Be tramps,’ he said, and turned and walked away with the dog at his heels.”

“The tramp looked at the battered wrecks around him in the cold, clear sunlight. He looked down at himself in his ragged clothes. Then he sat down in the car he had slept in, and reached into his pocket for a little screwdriver. While the dog watched quietly, he took the mouse and his child apart to see if he could make them dance again.”