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Hunger and fear are the only realities in dog life: an empty stomach makes a fierce dog.

No one likes to feel helpless. We find it psychologically unbearable and inside ourselves we may try to make ourselves part author of our misfortune rather than simply the recipient of it.

What could be more lonely than to be enveloped in silence, to be the last of your people to speak your native tongue, to have no way to pass on the wisdom of the elders, to anticipate the promise of the children. This tragic fate is indeed the plight of someone somewhere roughly every two weeks.

I see dog stories as an antidote to the dire news that nothing is ever going to get better.

For every story you hear that's tragic, there's another that's equally tragic or more so. I think you come to look at it as part of life.

If you have ever been in a real tragic or sad situation, the words that come out are hopelessly inadequate and kind of cliched.

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

It is possible to take something beautiful and lasting out of the heart-wrenching experience of seeing the animal you love move inexorably toward death.

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

Here is the tragedy: when you are the victim of depression, not only do you feel utterly helpless and abandoned by the world, you also know that very few people can understand, or even begin to believe, that life can be this painful.