Quotes from Jon Katz

Hey, Izzy, boy, let's go chase a sunset.

Rosie, let's get to work

I cherish the predictability of these creatures, their sociability, their contented acceptance of life. I wish I possessed even one of those traits. I'm working on it.

they said, with some adoption papers if we decided to keep him. I think Simon decided

It's easy to avoid suffering and easier to feel disconnected from the people experiencing

It's easy to talk about being merciful and compassionate," I said to my donkey. "It's not so easy to figure out how to live that way.

Humans have a need for compassion, but they also have a lot of anger, envy, frustration, and resentment, all the enemies of compassion.

I think if I've learned anything about friendship, it's to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don't walk away, don't be distracted, don't be too busy or tired, don't take them for granted. Friends are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. Powerful stuff.

It is difficult to see ourselves as we are. Sometimes we are fortunate enough to have good friends, lovers or others who will do us the good service of telling us the truth about ourselves. When we don't, we can so easily delude ourselves, lose a sense of truth about ourselves, and our conscience loses power and purpose. Mostly, we tell ourselves what we would like to hear. We lose our way.

The immature conscience is not its own master. It simply parrots the decisions of others. It does not make judgments of its own; it merely conforms to the judgments of others. That is not real freedom, and it makes true love impossible, for if we are to love truly and freely, we must be able to give something that is truly our own to another. If our heart does not belong to us, asks Merton, how can we give it to another?

We are human, and we suffer, and unlike the animals on the farm, we are self-aware, and we know that we suffer, and it doesn't hurt more or less if God caused it or could stop it, at least for me. I am definitely of the school that believes God has bigger stuff to worry about than me.

The relationship between a dog and a human is always complicated. The two know each other in a way nobody else quite understands, a connection shrouded in personal history, temperament, experience, instinct, and love.

There's a vulnerability about Rose, even a sweetness in her eyes, but there's no mistaking her priorities. Smart, tough, determined, she is essential, but rarely the dog that people melt over or want to take home. Yet she's a great dog.

Dogs are born knowing exactly what they want to do: eat, scratch, roll in disgusting stuff, sniff and squabble with other dogs, roam, sleep, have sex. Little of this is what we want them to do, of course. We ask them to sit, stay, smell peasant, practice abstinence, and be accommodating.

I am not mad here, but clear and calm. I am not transformed, but allowed to be wholly myself.I am isolated, but have never felt more connected to people. I am not imprisoned, but free. I am not cut off from my family and my roots, but am brought back to them. I am not living alone with dogs, but permitting my dogs to lead me somewhere I need to go, and it has been a great trip. We have more distance to travel together, I'm sure, before we are through.

Being able to use the word "geek" has helped me a lot to define myself, but not as a mold for me to fit myself into, as a template to help accentuate my differences.

That, even with imperfect masters, the canine soul is pure, loyal, and dependable.

Our task, wrote Einstein, is to liberate ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

Rose is undistractable, indefatigable, a problem solver. Work is her essence, her animating spirit, and the core of her impact on me. Her dedication to it helps make my life possible, connects the two of us in this powerful way.

It's interesting that my neighbor Irv, who saw dogs so differently, knew all the kids and people on the block and could recite the family history of each house until about a decade ago. Now few of our neighbors can name more than a handful of people who live on the street. They have little to do with local government, and vote sporadically, at best. In the evenings and on weekends, they go their own ways. Their kids are repeatedly warned about talking to people they don't know.

Whenever I hear people clucking about the decline of civilization, what's wrong with young people, how vulgar popular culture is, how confusing and frightening they find the internet, alarms go off. I know I'm around somebody whose hinges are rusting. Death will be bad enough, but for me, this early harbinger is more fearsome, because a part of one's spirit and openness and ability to learn and grow disappears.

Learning what really makes a dog like him tick had forced me to grasp more about what made me tick. I often didn't like what I saw in me, but I was determined to do right by him. Which meant, as Carolyn had suggested, that I had to be better. Orson, like all my dogs, was a measure, a barometer, a mirror of me.

I am lucky in marriage and in dogs.

Where does it begin this sense of being the Other?