When I wrote 'Marley & Me,' I had a clear audience in mind. And it did not include children. I wrote my book for adults and assumed only adults, and possibly teenagers, would be drawn to it.

Animal lovers are a special breed of humans, generous of spirit, full of empathy, perhaps a little prone to sentimentality, and with hearts as big as a cloudless sky

It's just the most amazing thing to love a dog, isn't it? It makes our relationships with people seem as boring as a bowl of oatmeal.

A dog doesn't care if you're rich or poor, educated or illiterate, clever or dull. Give him your heart and he will give you his.

He taught us the art of unqualified love. How to give it, how to accept it. Where there is that, most other pieces fall into place.

Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it waiting for us to come home each day.

Dogs are great. Bad dogs, if you can really call them that, are perhaps the greatest of them all.

Many of the qualities that come so effortlessly to dogs - loyalty, devotion, selflessness, unflagging optimism, unqualified love - can be elusive to humans.

If you still think you're a young pup then you are, no matter what the calendar says

A person can learn a lot from a dog, even a loopy one like ours. Marley taught me about living each day with unbridled exuberance and joy, about seizing the moment and following your heart.

. . . owning a dog always ended with this sadness because dogs just don't live as long as people do.

Her family was counting on her—to be responsible, to get good grades, to follow the rules, to be the good example. And more important, she expected those things of herself.

The American identity has never been a singular one and the voices of poets invariably sing, in addition to their own, the voices of those around them.

I don't know that I'll ever be the guy who needs to go to a tournament to be seen and to spectate. I feel like I can accomplish spectating from home.

If you do not hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes.

It is imperative that the artist reveal through the medium in which he is happiest, what he sees, thinks and feels about his surroundings.

Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others.

Killing time is not an easy job.

I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder that we could have tolerated anything so primitive.

We all die, just a question of when.

Writers are a fascinating breed, because there are so many kinds of them, they are made by so many circumstances, conditions, and mysteries, and there are so many ways for writing to be done.