James Herriot

They can't find my house now because I keep it very quiet where I live.

There was no last animal I treated. When young farm lads started to help me over the gate into a field or a pigpen, to make sure the old fellow wouldn't fall, I started to consider retiring.

I became a connoisseur of that nasty thud a manuscript makes when it comes through the letter box.

I will write another book if I feel like it.

I love writing about my job because I loved it, and it was a particularly interesting one when I was a young man. It was like holidays with pay to me.

I think it was the fact that I liked it so much that made the writing just come out of me automatically.

I was helped by having a verbatim memory of what happened years ago, even if I can't remember what happened a couple of days ago.

For years I used to bore my wife over lunch with stories about funny incidents.

If a farmer calls me to a sick animal, he couldn't care less if I were George Bernard Shaw.

I could do terrible things to people who dump unwanted animals by the roadside.

I have felt cats rubbing their faces against mine and touching my cheek with claws carefully sheathed. These things, to me, are expressions of love.

Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.

I wish people would realize that animals are totally dependent on us, helpless, like children, a trust that is put upon us.

I am never at my best in the early morning, especially a cold morning in the Yorkshire spring with a piercing March wind sweeping down from the fells, finding its way inside my clothing, nipping at my nose and ears.

I hope to make people realize how totally helpless animals are, how dependent on us, trusting as a child must that we will be kind and take care of their needs.

If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.