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I've always looked upon the Ducks as caricature human beings. Perhaps I've been years writing in that middle world that J.R.R. Tolkien describes, and never knew it.

When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.

If you know anything about ducks, you know a baby duck will imprint itself on you. It misses its mother.

In my books, there is no 'ugly duckling turning into a beautiful swan' syndrome because if you look at the Hansel and Gretel syndrome, it was a mistake. It wasn't a duckling, it was a cygnet, and that's why it turned into a swan. The duckling should with any luck turn into a nice clucking duck and get on with its life. Cluck! Cluck! Cluck!

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.

Most of my school friends and even a few of my teachers called me 'Duck.'

The perils of duck hunting are great - especially for the duck.

People eat duck and you think, well, we've got loads of chickens, leave the ducks alone!

From a neighbour, I got a one-day-old duckling and found, to my intense joy, that it transferred its following response to my person. At the same time, my interest became irreversibly fixated on water fowl, and I became an expert on their behaviour even as a child.

Don't quack like a duck, soar like an eagle.