Quotes by John Grogan

“Politics is ultimately a numbers game and the figures just dont add up.”

“It would be very effective if the pub industry joined the other groups in campaigning for a total ban.”

“Dori is a good person with character. You will notice the little things with her team. Her players will go after a loose ball which rolls out of bounds and hand it to a referee, or they always make sure they tuck their shirts in and are always polite. Those things are even more important than what shes taught them on the court.”

“I was pretty confident the book would be big, but not this big, Marley & Me.”

“He was locked in here. The wood door frame was totally gone to the studs.”

“It looked like the Jaws of Life had pulled it open.”

“We call her the anti-Marley.”

“Social attitudes have changed. This would have been inconceivable a decade ago. Now there are more women in Parliament and opposition to smoking goes across the range of age and class.”

“A ban would have been inconceivable 10 years ago. Opposition to smoking goes across the range of ages and social classes.”

“I was pretty confident it was going to do pretty well, but I had no idea it was going to jump to the top of the best-seller list.”

Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it waiting for us to come home each day. It is amazing how much love and laughter they bring into our lives and even how much closer we become with each other because of them.

A person can learn a lot from a dog, even a loopy one like ours. Marley taught me about living each day with unbridled exuberance and joy, about seizing the moment and following your heart. He taught me to appreciate the simple things-a walk in the woods, a fresh snowfall, a nap in a shaft of winter sunlight. And as he grew old and achy, he taught me about optimism in the face of adversity. Mostly, he taught me about friendship and selflessness and, above all else, unwavering loyalty.

Dogs are great. Bad dogs, if you can really call them that, are perhaps the greatest of them all.

In a dogs life, some plaster would fall, some cushions would open, some rugs would shred. Like any relationship, this one had its costs. They were costs we came to accept and balance against the joy and amusement and protection and companionship he gave us.

A dog has no use for fancy cars or big homes or designer clothes. Status symbol means nothing to him. A waterlogged stick will do just fine. A dog judges others not by their color or creed or class but by who they are inside. A dog doesnt care if you are rich or poor, educated or illiterate, clever or dull. Give him your heart and he will give you his. It was really quite simple, and yet we humans, so much wiser and more sophisticated, have always had trouble figuring out what really counts and what does not. As I wrote that farewell column to Marley, I realized it was all right there in front of us, if only we opened our eyes. Sometimes it took a dog with bad breath, worse manners, and pure intentions to help us see.

. . . owning a dog always ended with this sadness because dogs just dont live as long as people do.

Its just the most amazing thing to love a dog, isnt it? It makes our relationships with people seem as boring as a bowl of oatmeal.

Only then did I see. Something was amiss with Patricks snap-on one piece, or onesie as we manly dads like to call it. His chubby thighs, I now realized, were squeezed into the armholes, which were so tight they must have been cutting off his circulation. The collared neck hung between his legs like an udder. Up top, Patricks head stuck out through the unsnapped crotch, and his arms were lost somewhere in the billowing pant legs. It was quite a look.

We now had three girls and one testosterone-pumped guy bird that spent every walking minute doing of of three things: pursuing sex, having sex or crowing boastfully about the sex he had just scored. Jenny observed that roosters are what men would be if left to their own devices, with no social conventions to rein in their baser instincts, and I couldnt disagree. I had to admit, I kind of admired the lucky bastard.

The rhythm of solitude, once so intimidating, began to feel comfortable. Aloneness, I was learning, does not have to equal loneliness.