Caroline Paul

“It's hard in the firehouse to avoid the dessert thing. At 3 in the morning after some emergency, I have been known to eat an ice cream sandwich.”

“In a fire, you have to be thoughtful; you have to have a certain kind of intuitive smarts that the veterans have. I'm not there yet, despite the Stanford degree.”

“I should really be lifting only five days. I'm sort of obsessed, and I end up going in six, sometimes seven, and that's not good. Something that I preach but don't practice - moderation.”

“I'm not a big eater. I'm a terrible cook, and so I don't cook for myself.”

“Most people go to the office and sit at a desk. When firefighters go to the office, we might birth a baby in the morning, save a drowning surfer in the afternoon, and run into a fire at night. What could be more interesting than that?”

“I don't think that we really know our animals. We think we do because we're humans, and we think we can control things like that. We don't know anybody that we love. It could be a girlfriend or a cat. I think we just have to be at peace with that.”

“If there's a fire, I want to be there. Maybe because in being so close to death, I think I understand what it means to be truly alive.”

“I think as humans we do want to control our relationships, and you can't. It's probably better that you can't. That wouldn't be a real relationship, and we'd never learn and grow.”

“GPS works great. I recommend it for all cat owners who want to know what their cats do when they're not there, if you can stand the ridicule from your friends.”

“Fire taps something ancient and vital in each of us, something both snarling and reverential.”