"Every thought, every memory, every particle of the earth and air was saturated with Willy’s presence."
"Subtract Willy from the world, and the odds were that the world itself would cease to exist."
"Unless Mr. Bones found another master in one quick hurry, he was a pooch primed for oblivion."
"Know thine enemy—and then keep a wide berth."
"When all was said and done, the only surprise was that he hadn’t learned to talk better himself."
"Give away your shirt, give away your gold, Give away your shoes to the first stranger you see."
"If you can’t eat it or screw it, piss on it."
"Once you found yourself at death’s door, all the noodles in China weren’t going to stop that door from opening."
"If dogs were beyond the pull of oil paintings and string quartets, who was to say they wouldn’t respond to an art based on the sense of smell? Why not an olfactory art? Why not an art for dogs that dealt with the world as dogs knew it?"
"The whole world is a symphony of smells. Every hour, every minute, every second of his waking life is at once a physical and a spiritual experience."
"There is no difference between the inner and the outer, nothing to separate the high from the low."
"Making toast would be turned into a religious act, an emanation of otherworldliness, a form of prayer."
"To leave the world a little better than you found it. That’s the best a man can ever do."
"Even now, as I enter the valley of the shadow of death, my thoughts bog down in the gunk of yore."
"Understanding. That’s what I’m after, chum. The key to the puzzle, the secret formula after four-plus decades of groping in the dark."
"The human spirit is a dull instrument, and often we’re no better at figuring out how to take care of ourselves than the lowest worm in the ground."
"I’ve jumped, I’ve galloped, I’ve soared, and no matter how many times I’ve crashed back to earth, I’ve always picked myself up and tried again."
"It’s not easy doing good works. There’s no profit in it. And when there’s no money in a thing, people tend to get confused."
"Dying's no big deal," he said, and by that he meant that he was ready to go, that he was grateful to her for seeing to it that his last hours had not been spent among strangers.
"You hang around with creeps like them, and something bad is always going to happen to you."
"You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, and all I’ve done is let you down."
"He jabbed the air with his finger, again and again pointing it at Mr. Bones, and Mr. Bones barked back at him, confused by the intensity of the man’s anger, by the noise of Henry’s wailing, by the sudden chaos of the whole hysterical scene."
"By now, he knew that all was lost. Nothing good could come of this battle, at least not as far as he was concerned, and sorry as he felt for Henry, he felt even sorrier for himself."
"What good was a home if you didn’t feel safe in it, if you were treated as an outcast in the very spot that was supposed to be your refuge?"
"To be alive meant to breathe; to breathe meant the open air; and the open air meant any place that was not Baltimore, Maryland."
"Memory was a place, a real place that one could visit, and that to spend a few moments among the dead was not necessarily bad for you, that it could in fact be a source of great comfort and happiness."
"But you’re not like other men, and now that you’re gone, there isn’t a place on earth where I’m not in danger."
"Before you start feeling too sorry for yourself, just remember that you’re not the first dog who’s ever been lost."
"The world was filled with such wonders, and it was a sad state of affairs when a man spent his time worrying about the wrong things."
"Dogs don’t ask questions. They make do with what they get."
"Birds weren’t worth the trouble, but whenever a wingless creature wandered onto the lawn, he took it upon himself to chase the varmint from the property, rushing toward him in a frenzied outburst of barks and growls."
"The feline intruder would always position himself in a spot designed to cause the maximum frustration: a few inches out of the dog’s range."
"For Mr. Bones, the lawn’s beauty was a gift from God, and he felt it should be treated as holy ground."
"He had three people to love now, and after spending his whole life as a one-man dog, that was more than enough."
"That was one of the things he liked best about her: the way she talked to him, calmly moving from point to point without leaving anything out, as if there was never any question that he couldn’t understand what she was saying."
"Once Alice was well enough to go to school, Polly began to think about going back to school herself, but then she got pregnant with Tiger, and she had to put it off again."
"Polly always took care to eliminate Mr. Bones’s traces from the house when Dick was about to return, assiduously vacuuming every spot where the dog had been, even getting down on her hands and knees when necessary and using strips of Scotch tape to remove any vagrant hairs that the machine had missed."
"It wasn’t just the daily rides in the van, and it wasn’t just the regular meals or the absence of ticks and fleas from his coat. It was the barbecues on the back patio, the porterhouse steak bones he was given to gnaw on, the weekend outings to Wanacheebee Pond and the swims with Alice in the cool water, the overall feeling of splendor and well-being that had engulfed him."
"Good begets good; evil begets evil; and even if the good you give is met by evil, you have no choice but to go on giving better than you get."