“What right had they to make me suffer like that?”

“Learning what really makes a dog like him tick had forced me to grasp more about what made me tick. I often didn't like what I saw in me, but I was determined to do right by him. Which meant, as Carolyn had suggested, that I had to be better. Orson, like all my dogs, was a measure, a barometer, a mirror of me.”

“Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.”

“It is said that we do not make the guilty party suffer for the sake of suffering; it is nonetheless true that we find it right that he should suffer.”

“it seemed to him that no matter what evils a man had committed, making him suffer purely for the sake of suffering was pointless. It didn't undo the harm he had wrought; it didn't please anyone or improve anyone's life.”

“I alone knew what I had suffered. I alone knew what it felt like to be alive but dead.”