“...a full week of their mother's quiet fury over the fun they don't seem to be having and their father's dogged attempts to provide it...”

“You don't have to be famous. You just have to make your mother and father proud of you.”

“Humans are not put to sleep for failing to provide leadership for their dogs, countless dogs have lost their lives for the want of it.”

“Get over it,' Sherlock said, and looked at her husband. 'No, no, bad dog, keep quiet.”

“My mother was a good Catholic -- she went to mass twice a week at St. Mary's in Richmond, but my father was an Orthodox Eclectic.”

“Dogs don't like me. It is a simple law of the universe, like gravity. I am not exaggerating when I say that I have never passed a dog that didn't act as if it thought I was about to take its Alpo. Dogs that have not moved from the sofa in years will, at the sniff of me passing outside, rise in fury and hurl themselves at shut windows. I have seen tiny dogs, no bigger than a fluffy slipper, jerk little old ladies off their feet and drag them over open ground in a quest to get at my blood and sinew. Every dog on the face of the earth wants me dead.”