Water for Elephants

"Work is the best thing for age."

"I was born a passenger. They found me wrapped in a newspaper under a seat on the Baltimore and Ohio. I was just three days old. I grew up in foster homes. I'd always daydream about who my parents were. When I was five, for an entire year, I pretended my mom was an Appaloosa mare. I did. And that I was a filly, and that I was just dreaming that I was a girl. And that one day I'd wake up, and I'd run home. One thing's for sure, I was a lot safer in those stables than I ever was in those homes. And then the circus came to town."

Marlena: "He sold off two dead-beat clowns and a train car so he could buy Lucinda, our lovely fat lady. And Rex."
August: "Rex."
Marlena: "But you kept the coochie girls, didn't you?"
August: "No denying they're good revenue. I needed money. So I had to scavenge every dead circus for every act we have."
Marlena: "you didn't have to buy me, did you?"
August: "No. I had to marry you."
Marlena: "That's right."

[after incident with the lion]
Jacob: "You think that's funny?"
August: [is laughing] "Yes, I do."
Jacob: "I could have lost my arm!"
August: "No, you couldn't have. He doesn't have any teeth."

"As long as we can walk, we play."

Charlie: "We'll get you in the records books: 'Oldest man that ever ran away with the circus'."
Old Jacob: "I'm not running away, I'm coming home."

Jacob: "Who's the woman who works with the horses?"
Camel: "That ain't no woman, that's the boss' wife and she don't talk to nobody and you don't talk to her."

"You do right by me, I'll show you a life most suckers can't even dream of."