“Being a person, I had come torealize, is a communal activity. Dogs know how to be dogs. But peopledo not know how to be people unless and until they learn from otherpeople.”

“But what did I have left to contribute? Just this? Just being the last known pair of truly human eyes to look up into the sky and experience the ␣eeting ␣ush of hope? Being a person, I had come to realize, is a communal activity. Dogs know how to be dogs. But people do not know how to be people unless and until they learn from other people.”

“Everything I know, I learned from dogs.”

“A person is a person through other persons.None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are. A person is entitled to a stable community life, and the first of these communities is the family.”

“You know how cats do. They hide to die. Dogs come home.”

“How come dog and dog owner are so alike?”