" Picasso’s relations with his animals were very close: he had an extraordinary gift for entering into direct contact with them: could handle a wild bird or walk up to a furious dog when most people would have provoked an ugly scene: and the tired old cliché about the power of the human eye finds its justification in Picasso. He had in fact a most luminous and striking eye, a singular, penetrating gaze, always the first thing that people noticed. But these relations were quite unlike those which are usual in Anglo-Saxon countries. A child brought up on the spectacle of slaughtered bulls does not have the same reactions as one brought up on flopsy bunnies or the products of Walt Disney’s muse: Picasso did not shift his animals to a semi-human plane—he met them on their own. "

― Patrick O'Brian , Picasso: A Biography