I’m fairly certain, Captain,” she said, “that the more you discover about me, the more you will dislike me. Therefore, let’s cut to the chase and acknowledge that we don’t like each other. Then we won’t have to bother with the in-between part.”She was so bloody frank and practical about the whole thing that Christopher couldn’t help but be amused.“I’m afraid I can’t oblige you.”“Why not?”“Because when you said that just now, I found myself starting to like you.”“You’ll recover,” she said.Her decisive tone made him want to smile. “It’s getting worse, actually,” he told her. “Now I’m absolutely convinced that I like you.”Beatrix gave him a patently skeptical stare. “What about my hedgehog? Do you like her, too?”Christopher considered that. “Affection for rodents can’t be rushed.”“Medusa isn’t a rodent. She’s an erinaceid.

It would seem very silly to start a conversation with a common hedgehog. They are not at all like cats, who surely understand the human language.

He has been mad for you these many months, ever since you prodded him in the nether regions with a hedgehog.

An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.