“But will you miss me? More importantly - will I miss you? Does either one of us really want to hear the answer to that question?”

“There's an honesty to the wolf world that is liberating. There's no diplomacy, no decorum. You tell your enemy you hate him; you show your admiration by confessing the truth. That directness doesn't work with humans, who are masters of subterfuge. Does this dress make me look fat? Do you really love me? Did you miss me? When a person asks this, she doesn't want to know the real answer. She wants you to lie to her. After two years of living with wolves, I had forgotten how many lies it takes to build a relationship.”

“It's just like nurses in a hospital tend to know more than the doctors most of the time; if you really want to get the answers to a question about court, you should spend more time buttering up the clerks than the judges.”

“You have to understand what you’re missing before you can really feel a loss.”

“The best parenting advice I ever got was from a labor nurse who told me the following:1. After your baby gets here, the dog will just be a dog.2. The terrible twos last through age three.3. Never ask your child an open-ended question, such as "Do you want to go to bed now?" You won't want to hear the answer, believe me. "Do you want me to carry you upstairs, or do you want to walk upstairs to go to bed?" That way, you get the outcome you want and they feel empowered.”

“We all want to know what went wrong, even when there isn't really an answer to that question.”

“until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one”