Pam Brown quotes:

A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often - just to save it from drying out completely.

One small cat changes coming home to an empty house to coming home.

A horse is the projection of peoples' dreams about themselves - strong, powerful, beautiful - and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existence.

Sisters annoy, interfere, criticize. Indulge in monumental sulks, in huffs, in snide remarks. Borrow. Break. Monopolize the bathroom. Are always underfoot. But if catastrophe should strike, sisters are there. Defending you against all comers.

You never realize how much your mother loves you till you explore the attic - and find every letter you ever sent her, every finger painting, clay pot, bead necklace, Easter chicken, cardboard Santa Claus, paperlace Mother's Day card and school report since day one.

A sister is the cure for swollen heads and ego trips. One may a star, a Chief Executive-famous and rich and beautiful. But one's sister has the family photo album. And a long, long memory. And a tendency to wink at one on Top Occasions.

Kittens are wide-eyed, soft and sweet. With needles in their jaws and feet.

A cat can maintain a position of curled up somnolence on your knee until you are nearly upright. To the last minute she hopes your conscience will get the better of you and you will settle down again.

For the sake of the sons - and even for the son's future wives - a woman must keep a part of her mind and heart entirely for herself. Every family is better off with a wife and mother who can astonish and occasionally dewilder.

If your sister is in a tearing hurry to go out and cannot catch your eye, she's wearing your best sweater.

We expect too much at Christmas. It's got to be magical. It's got to go right. Feasting. Fun. The perfect present. All that anticipation. Take it easy. Love's the thing. The rest is tinsel.

Loss leaves us empty - but learn not to close your heart and mind in grief. Allow life to replenish you. When sorrow comes it seems impossible - but new joys wait to fill the void.

Odd how much it hurts when a friend moves away- and leaves behind only silence.

Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause most inconvenience.

Horses lend us the wings we lack.

You took me to adventure and to love. We two have shared great joy and great sorrow. And now I stand at the gate of the paddock watching you run in an ecstasy of freedom, knowing you will return to stand quietly, loyally, beside me.

Be wary of the horse with a sense of humor.

A cat is a regency gentleman--elegant of pose, exquisite of manner, with spotless linen and an enthusiasm for bare knuckle fights, rampaging love affairs, duels by moonlight and the singing of glees. He expects immaculate service from his domestic staff, and possesses a range of invective that would make a navy blanch.

Give a pup a home and a little love and he will give you his heart forever.

Many a cat can only be lured in by switching off all the lights and keeping very still. Until the indignant cry of a cat-locked-out comes at the door.

A younger sister is someone to use as a guinea-pig in trying sledges and experimental go-carts. Someone to send on messages to Mum. But someone who needs you - who comes to you with bumped heads, grazed knees, tales of persecution. Someone who trusts you to defend her. Someone who thinks you know the answers to almost everything.

Always smile back at little children. To ignore them is to destroy their belief that the world is good.

If there is a heaven, it's certain our animals are to be there. Their lives become so interwoven with our own, it would take more than an archangel to detangle them.

An older sister is a friend and defender - a listener, conspirator, a counsellor and a sharer of delights. And sorrows too.

The courage of very ordinary people is all that stands between us and the dark.

A horse can lend its rider the speed and strength he or she lacks - but the rider who is wise remembers it is no more then a loan.

For every person who has ever lived there has come, at last, a spring he will never see. Glory then in the springs that are yours.

In loneliness, in sickness, in confusion-the mere knowledge of friendship makes it possible to endure, even if the friend is powerless to help. It is enough that they exist. Friendship is not diminished by distance or time, by imprisonment or war, by suffering or silence. It is in these things that it roots most deeply. It is from these things that it flowers.

The child who ran weeping to you with a cut finger is now brought home, smiling gamely, with a broken collarbone and incredible contusions- 'it wasn't Jezebels fault, Dad.'

For sheer excitement you can keep movie premieres and roller-coasters . An empty white canvas waiting to be filled. That's the thing.

A bag of apples, a pot of homemade jam, a scribbled note, a bunch of golden flowers, a coloured pebble, a box of seedlings, an empty scent bottle for the children. . . . Who needs diamonds and van-delivered bouquets?

A cat likes to hear you calling him. He sits in a bush a yard from your shoes - and listens.

A dog wakens your heart to joy and companionship.

A friend is the only person you will let into the house when you are Turning Out Drawers.

A teddy bear does not depend upon mechanics to give him the semblance of life. He is loved - and therefore he lives.

A teddy bear is your childhood wrapped up in faded yellow fur, and as such, he commands affection long after he is out grown.

Bears being sent through the mail should never be squashed up to make them fit. It gives them indigestion.

Bears need people. People need bears.

Becoming a grandmother is wonderful. One moment you're just a mother. The next you are all-wise and prehistoric.

Brooks too wide for our leaping, hedges far to high. Loads too heavy for our moving, burdens too cumbersome for us to bear. Distances far beyond our journeying. The horse gave us mastery.

Dads are most ordinary men turned by love into heroes, adventurers, story-tellers, singers of songs.

Dads don't need to be tall and broad-shouldered and clever. Love makes them so.

Friendship is not diminished by distance or time, by imprisonment or war, by suffering or silence. It is in these things that it roots most deeply.

From serenity comes gentleness, comes lasting strength.

Grandad has a long and earnest conversation with his grandchild. He says, you are noisy and wiggly and will be sent back if you don't pull herself together....The baby smiles complacently. She has him exactly where she wants him.

However time or circumstances may come between mother and her child, their lives are interwoven forever.

Human beings are drawn to cats because they are all we are not â?? self-contained, elegant in everything they do, relaxed, assured, glad of company, yet still possessing secret lives.

If you've only one breath left, use it to say thank you.

In a world gone bad, a bear - even a bear standing on its head - is a comforting, uncomplicated, dependable hunk of sanity.

Integrity rings like fine glass. True, clear, and reassuring.

It should be possible to exist with only a short shelf of books, to read and give away. After all - we may not open a book, once read, for ten years or more. But the act of reading has made it part of us - to relinquish it would be to lose an extension of our being.

It's hard to be responsible, adult and sensible all the time. How good it is to have a sister whose heart is as young as your own.

It's hard to visualize the toys you had fifty years ago - all save bear. He's as clear as if he were sitting on the desk in front of you...of course...he probably is.

Love is to understand, at last, the suffering of another.

Medicines may be necessary. Flowers lift the heart. But your smile is the best restorative of all.

Mothers are the pivot on which the family spins, Mothers are the pivot on which the world spins.

Music speaks of Platonic truth - the ideal river rather than the polluted reality, love as we dream it rather than we experience it, grief noble and uplifting rather than our distracted weeping. It is necessary to our survival and our sanity.

Riding turns 'I wish into 'I can'.

Sisters don't need words. They have perfected a language of snarls and smiles and frowns and winks - expressions of shocked surprise and incredulity and disbelief. Sniffs and snorts and gasps and sighs - that can undermine any tale you're telling.

Sisters never quite forgive each other for what happened when they were five.

Sisters share the scent and smells... the feel of a common childhood.

Thank you for being interested. Doesn't sound much but it meant just about everything.

The baby rises to its feet, takes a step, is overcome with triumph and joy - and falls flat on its face. It is a pattern for all that is to come! But learn from the bewildered baby. Lurch to your feet again. You'll make the sofa in the end.

The first step to wisdom is to be sure one says and does what one believes.

The trouble with sharing one's bed with cats is that they'd rather sleep on you than beside you.

The work of a garden bears visible fruits-in a world where most of our labours seem suspiciously meaningless.

We have become a society where the artist is regarded as a self-indulgent superfluity, and the person who juggles stocks and shares is an essential part of the economy.

We shared. Parents. Home. Pets. Celebrations. Catastrophes. Secrets. And the threads of our experience became so interwoven that we are linked. I can never be utterly lonely, knowing you share the planet.

When sisters stand shoulder to shoulder, who stands a chance against us?

You are asleep. Deep, deep asleep - and then the world caves in. The cat has leapt from the top window onto your stomach. He is saturated. He is hungry. He taps you into full wakefulness with a sodden paw "Could you open a can?"