“Quipped one frustrated Colorado rancher in the early 1920s, "Wolves have all been trapped at, shot at, and poisoned at so long that they can damn near speak English!"...To the specter of the rancher, the most we can say today is that wolves have yet to learn the language of humans, while we, if only in the most primitive fashion, have begun listening to theirs.”

“In the span of three hundred years nationwide, but only seventy years in the West, hunters in the United States had managed to kill off the wild prey of gray wolves; settlers, farmers, and ranchers had occupied most of the wolves' former habitat; wolfers had poisoned them; bounty hunters had dynamited their dens and pursued them with dogs, traps, and more poison; and finally, the government had stepped in and, primarily at the livestock industry's behest, quite literally finished them off.”

“Even as they sought their destruction, many considered them [wolves] "possessed of near human intelligence," according Stanley Young, one so refined and subtle that it "at times caused the greatest wonderment.”

“Wolves, like all living things, had been created by God with "a purpose," declared Shoemaker, and thus have "an inherent right to live, to be protected by mankind.”

“As healthy and viable populations of wild animals, wolves were gone from most of eastern North America long before the death of the last animals.”

“..."we have been fed for so many generations on tales of the Wolf's ferocity, treachery, rapacity, cowardice, and strength" that most people have a "wholly wrong picture of this most interesting animal.”

“As top predators, both humans and wolves evolved the most successful means to capitalization on the continent's wealth of prey. In short, by traveling parallel paths, the two species arrived that the same solution of how not only to survive, but flourish.The resemblance is haunting.”