My mother early on taught us to respect all animals, and I mean all animals - not just cats and dogs but rats and snakes and spiders and fish and wildlife, so I really grew up believing they are just like us and just as deserving of consideration.

I have pet snakes.

When I was 16... I worked in a pet store. And they fired me because... they had three snakes in there, and one day I braided them.

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.

I am tremendously excited to introduce a unique 'Metal Gear Solid' experience to a new audience of gamers as well as collaborate with my mentor in game design, Mr. Miyamoto, on 'Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes' for Nintendo GameCube.

If we choose to walk into a forest where a tiger lives, we are taking a chance. If we swim in a river where crocodiles live, we are taking a chance. If we visit the desert or climb a mountain or enter a swamp where snakes have managed to survive, we are taking a chance.

"No matter what a person does to cover up and conceal themselves, when we write and lose control, I can spot a person from Alabama, Florida, South Carolina a mile away even if they make no exact reference to location. Their words are lush like the land they come from, filled with nine aunties, people named Bubba. There is something extravagant and wild about what they have to say - snakes on the roof of a car, swamps, a delta, sweat, the smell of sea, buzz of an air conditioner, Coca-Cola - something fertile, with a hidden danger or shame, thick like the humidity, unspoken yet ever-present.

THERE WILL BE MANY SNAKES IN LIFE, KEEP THE POWER TO MAKE THEM DANCE.

Humans are more venomous than snakes

You were camouflaged snakes-in-the-grass.

Nearly all human cultures plant gardens, and the garden itself has ancient religious connections. For a long time, I've been interested in pre-Christian European beliefs, and the pagan devotions to sacred groves of trees and sacred springs. My German translator gave me a fascinating book on the archaeology of Old Europe, and in it I discovered ancient artifacts that showed that the Old European cultures once revered snakes, just as we Pueblo Indian people still do. So I decided to take all these elements - orchids, gladiolus, ancient gardens, Victorian gardens, Native American gardens, Old European figures of Snake-bird Goddesses - and write a novel about two young sisters at the turn of the century.

You can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors. You know, eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard.

Look, it's easy to outsmart a werewolf or a vampire," Jace said. "They're no smarter than anyone else. But faeries live for hundreds of years and they're as cunning as snakes. They can't lie, but they love to engage in creative truth-telling. They'll find out whatever it is you want most in the world and give it to you-with a sting in the tail of the gift that will make you regret you ever wanted it in the first place.

God doesn't build shit. Yeah, He creates stuff - the World, the mountain ranges, all that - but any fuck with one eye left in his head will tell you that He doesn't spend much time fixing up all His crap. No, He made it, splinters and snakes and all, but then He just took off, leaving the whole Goddamn thing to whatever carrion birds feast on dilapidation.

Perhaps swimming was dancing under the water, he thought. To swim under lily pads seeing their green slender stalks wavering as you passed, to swim under upraised logs past schools of sunfish and bluegills, to swim through reed beds past wriggling water snakes and miniature turtles, to swim in small lakes, big lakes, Lake Michigan, to swim in small farm ponds, creeks, rivers, giant rivers where one was swept along easefully by the current, to swim naked alone at night when you were nineteen and so alone you felt like you were choking every waking moment, having left home for reasons more hormonal than rational; reasons having to do with the abstraction of the future and one's questionable place in the world of the future, an absurdity not the less harsh for being so widespread.

It's good to see the snakes revealing themselves. They weren't actually hidden at all. People hide behind the masks, but eventually you see them for who they truly are.

Leo had seen Tia Callida in action; she liked knives, snakes and putting babies in roaring fires. Yeah, definitely let's unleash her rage. Great idea.

Can't stand all these poisonous creatures, all these snakes and insects and fish and things. Wretched things, biting everybody. And then people expect me to tell them what to do about it. I'll tell them what to do. Don't get bitten in the first place. (quoting Dr. Struan Sutherland)

What I'm attempting to do is to show people that if I can spend some time with very dangerous spiders and snakes and scorpions then maybe they'll feel different about the spiders and snakes they find around their areas. I don't need people to keep them as pets. I just like them to be respectful and see that everything in nature has its place.

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.

I try and eat really healthy when I'm home but I certainly don't eat worms and snakes.

I've had a fair amount of experience with snakes and I find them to be pretty honest in terms of how you read their body language and emotions. They'll tell you when they're grumpy. They'll tell you when they're okay.

I have snakes three sharks moray eels piranhas five scorpions and a bird spider. All of them are predators. They are dangerous but it's cool to have strong and powerful pets.

I have mentally overcome situations most of you would be terrified to ever attempt: heights fire needles spiders snakes angry monkeys being shot being hit by a car going blind - you name it I have been in a situation where I have had to mentally overcome my inherent fears to do my job.