A biography for Donald McCaighasn’t been written yet.
“I am no historian but have tried to stick tight to the facts.”
“I had been saying to myself for a good many years that I was really a writer and that I was in advertising temporarily.”
“I'm afraid, Belle, that being a lady is more than proper clothes. It is an attitude. From your...experience, you may know more of business and politics than ladies are supposed to know. Gentlemen are pleased to think ladies are ornamental, and it is an ill-advised ornament who contradicts her gentleman.”
“I'm out of the terse Hemingway school.”
“A sheepdog trial is the most difficult test of a man and dog ever devised.”
“In life, sometimes it pays off when you really don't give a damn.”
“Since dogs could hear and smell better than men, we could concentrate on sight. Since courage is commonplace in dogs, men's adrenal glands could shrink. Dogs, by making us more efficient predators, gave us time to think. In short, dogs civilized us.”
“I don't care to read about Garrison Keillor. We cover the same sort of territory, and I don't need to know anything more about him.”
“The majority of border collie owners and breeders don't want to have anything to do with the show ring.”
“I do not believe you can work with animals - certainly you cannot train them - without deciding that if humans have souls, dogs do, too.”
“Rhett Butler is very mysterious. He disappears, he reappears, God knows where he goes. We know nothing about his family to speak of.”
“Once they become AKC registered, the newspapers will become flooded with ads for them. And you'll see Border collies in pet stores and animal shelters.”
“I am built funny. Picture Mark Twain's head on Ichabod Crane's body. Now hold your mental picture to the light and crumple it.”
“It is the job of the dog trainer to summon the dog's genetics, not to impose man's will over dog's.”