Porcupines

Porcupines are rodents with a coat of sharp spines, or quills, that defend them from predators. They are indigenous to the Americas, Southern Asia, Europe, and Africa. Porcupines are the third largest of the rodents, behind the capybara and the beaver.

Maine should be pleased that its animal is not a waverer, and rather than fight, lets the primed quill fall. ~ Marianne Moore

Quotes

Arranged alphabetically by author.

• I'm a little hoarse tonight. I've been living in Chicago for the past two months, and you know how it is, yelling for help on the way home every night. Things are so tough in Chicago that at Easter time, for bunnies the little kids use porcupines.
  • Fred Allen, Much Ado About Me (1956)

• What! Would you slap the Porcupine?
  Unhappy child — desist!
  Alas! That any friend of mine
  Should turn Tupto-philist.
  • Hilaire Belloc, More Beasts for Worse Children: The Porcupine

• The Deer don't dine
  When a Wolf's about,
  And the Porcupine
  Sticks his quill-points out.
  • Arthur Guiterman, Safety First

• If you start throwing hedgehogs under me, I shall throw a couple of porcupines under you.
  • Nikita Khrushchev, New York Times (7 November 1963)

• Maine should be pleased that its animal
  is not a waverer, and rather
  than fight, lets the primed quill fall.
  Shallow oppressor, intruder,
  insister, you have found a resister.
  • Marianne Moore in "Apparition of Splendor", in The Poems of Marianne Moore (2003)

• Any hound a porcupine nudges
  Can't be blamed for harboring grudges.
  I know one hound that laughed all winter
  At a porcupine that sat on a splinter.
  • Ogden Nash, The Porcupine

• Never enter an arsekicking contest with a porcupine.
  • Terry Pratchett, in Sourcery (1988); a remark of "Cohen the Barbarian", quoted by his daughter Conina.

• And each particular hair to stand on end,
  Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I sc.v