“There is hope for you yet.-Einstein the Labrador Retriever via scrabble tiles”

“Imagine that you are more than nothing. Evil made you, but you are no more evil than a child unborn. If you want, if you seek, if you hope, who is to say that your hope might not be answered?”

“You won't find the truth of life in morbidity, only in hope.”

“If you're still, and if you don't hope too much, peace will come to you. It's a grace. But you have to choose happiness.”

“The retriever took each bit of meat from his master's hand with a delicacy almost equal to that of a hummingbird sipping sugar water from a garden feeder, and when it was all gone, he gazed up at Dusty with an adoration that could not have been much less than the love with which the angels regard God.”

“When we hope, we usually hope for the wrong thing.”

“With blue vinyl-tile floor, pale-green wainscoating, pink walls, a yellow ceiling, and orange-and-white stork-patterned drapes, the expectant fathers' lounge churned with the negative energy of color overload. It would have served well as the nervous-making set for a nightmare about a children's-show host who led a secret life as an ax murderer. The chain-smoking clown didn't improve the ambience.”