“The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“You know, through pain, you learn a lot about yourself--things you thought you never knew you wanted to learn. And it's kind of like those animals that regrow a part of their body--like a starfish. You might not feel it. You might not even want to grow, but you will. You'll grow that part that broke off, and that growing, that blooming--cannot happen without the pain.”

“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.”