“In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.”

“True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow”

“We have in America "The Big Two-Hearted River" tradition: taking your wounds to the wilderness for a cure, a conversation, a rest, whatever. And as is in the Hemingway story, if your wounds aren't too bad, it works. But this isn't Michigan (or Faulkner's Big Woods in Mississippi for that matter). This is Alaska.”

“First, I'll kill the dog with kindness, and if that doesn't work, I'll just kill him.”

“When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.”

“The future ours for a while to hold, with its heaviness—and hope moving from one location to anotherlike the holy ghost that it is.”

“What fetters the mind and benumbs the spirit is ever the dogged acceptance of absolutes.”