“For centuries the wolf was North America's beast, an animal transmogrified into a mythic and blood-lustful killer, pursued by every conceivable means, reviled with such savage vehemence that nothing short of wholesale extirpation was imaginable. Today, the symbolic power of the wolf remains while our perception of the animal, as well as ourselves, has vastly changed.That such a transformation was ever possible at all is the ultimate triumph of wolf recovery.”

“It does not demean men to want to be what they imagine the wolf to be, but it does demean them to kill the animal for it.”

“After enduring humankind's unrelenting persecution, the wolf had become something nature had never intended, "the curse of a generation of ranchers and the symbol of destruction across a wide and fertile land." It wasn't the wolf who was the villain, claimed Caras, but man, "eternally guilty of crimes beyond counting --man the killer, the slayer, the luster-for-blood --[who] had sought to expurgate himself of his sin and guilt by condemning the predatory animals.”

“We humans fear the beast within the wolf because we do not understand the beast within ourselves”

“She did not know that the wolf was a wicked sort of animal, and she was not afraid of him.”

“Despite its misrepresentations, Mowat's book shattered many myths and untruths that had hung about the wolf's neck for centuries. Mowat's wolves weren't savage brutes, but instead were playful and social creatures, good and protective parents --animals entirely ill-deserving of the treatment they had received.”