John Grogan

“Living organically is my way of feeling connected to the earth and my own humanity. It's how I feel balanced and at peace with the planet.”

“It's just the most amazing thing to love a dog, isn't it? It makes our relationships with people seem as boring as a bowl of oatmeal.”

“'Marley and Me' was a book I was proud of and believed in, but I thought it would just have a modest audience because it is such a personal story about my marriage and my family.”

“Cats will outsmart dogs every time.”

“A dog is the greatest gift a parent can give a child. OK, a good education, then a dog.”

“I confess to being a CNN junkie. And when I'm driving, it's all NPR all the time.”

“In a dog's 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.”

“. . . owning a dog always ended with this sadness because dogs just don't live as long as people do.”

“Dogs are a really amazing eye opener for us humans because their lives are compressed into such a short period, so we can see them go from puppyhood to adolescence to strong adulthood and then into their sunset years in 10 to 12 years. It really drives home the point of how finite all our lives are.”

“Certain people are not going to connect with a book about the effect a dog has on a family. But every one of us has parents and has either said goodbye to those parents or knows that someday they will.”

“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 couldn't disagree. I had to admit, I kind of admired the lucky bastard.”

“Even though I'm totally dependent on modern electronic gizmos, from my laptop to my iPod to my cell phone, I love to embrace old technology or no technology at all.”

“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.”

“Really, as a writer, I believe that if you're going to write about your own life, you need to do it as honestly and candidly as you are capable.”

“Many of the qualities that come so effortlessly to dogs - loyalty, devotion, selflessness, unflagging optimism, unqualified love - can be elusive to humans.”

“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 doesn't 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.”

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

“I collect old rusty hand tools and sharpen and polish them, then use them to build things out of walnut and cherry that I harvest from fallen trees in the woods.”

“I take a lot of satisfaction in trying to make my land as self-contained as possible, its own little mini environment. Minimal outputs; minimal inputs.”

“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.”