Dog Story Quotes & Sayings

No matter our size or shape, everyone deserves a safe place in this world." ~ from BIG SMALL DOG, a children's story about overcoming bullying and adversity, and discovering unity and friendship. — Suzanne V. Marshall

Each of us is born with a series of built-in confusions that are probably somehow Darwinian. These are: (1) we're central to the universe (that is, our personal story is the main and most interesting story, the only story, really); (2) we're separate from the universe (there's US and then, out there, all that other junk - dogs and swing-sets, and the State of Nebraska and low-hanging clouds and, you know, other people), and (3) we're permanent (death is real, o.k., sure - for you, but not for me). — George Saunders

TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT
To make a long story short
I leave all my possessions
to the Municipal Slaughterhouse
to the Special Unit of the Police Department
to Lucky Dog Lotto
So now if you want you can shoot — Nicanor Parra

My notion of a great novel is something like a five-hundred-page shaggy-dog story, with only the punch line omitted. — Edward Abbey

The library of my elementary school had this great biography section, and I read all of these paperback biographies until they were dog-eared. The story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Madame Curie and Martin Luther King and George Washington Carver and on and on and on. — Christine Quinn

Only Ron's dog was watching William. He considered that it had, for a dog, a very offensive and knowing look.
A couple of months ago someaone had tried to hand William the old story about there being a dog in the city that could talk. ( ... ) The dog in front of William didn't look as if it could talk, but it DID look as if it would swear. — Terry Pratchett

Readers want to visualize your story as they read it. The more exact words you give them, the more clearly they see it, smell it, hear it, taste it. Thus, a dog should be an 'Airedale,' not just a 'dog.' A taste should not be merely 'good' but 'creamy and sweet' or 'sharply salty' or 'buttery on the tongue.' — Nancy Kress

Why do we cry when somebody die, we can't bring him, back we just lose time crying and feeling miserable and after few days we just find that we can't bring him!

(Note: I have Written a story about my dog which died, in the series of The Life Of One KId) — Deyth Banger

I notice that when I feel the most disconnected, once I'm done blaming the moon and everything else, I can see that I am so mired in identification with form and ego and story and identity, and that if I want to, I can read some scripture or read some spiritual book or pray or meditate or sit in the sun or hang around the birds and the dogs, and get a real objective sense of what's really going on here. That usually softens things. — Alanis Morissette

Even if only the people in your writing group read your memoirs or stories or novel, even if you only wrote your story so that one day your children would know what life was like when you were a child and you knew the name of every dog in town - still, to have written your version is an honorable thing to have done. — Anne Lamott

How was Gengo to know, Saigyo reflected, that this unheroic existence imposed even greater torment than the icy lashings of the Nachi Falls in its thousand-foot leap? How was Gengo to realize that Saigyo had not slept a single night undisturbed since he had fled his home for the Eastern Hills, that his sleep was haunted by the cries of his beloved daughter from whom he had torn himself.
Who knew that during the day, when he went about his tasks of drawing water and chopping wood as he composed verses, the sighting of the wind in the treetops of the valleys below and the pines surrounding the temple sounded to him like the mourning of his young wife, and so troubled his nights that sleep no longer visited him? Never again would Saigyo find peace. He had wrenched asunder the living boughs of the tree that was his life. Remorse and compassion for his loved ones would dog him to the end of his days. — Eiji Yoshikawa

My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell. — David Simon

There are as many ways to discover your story as there are to trip over a dog in the kitchen--and some of them feel about as planned. — Jeffrey A. Carver

EVERY DOG'S STORY
I have a bed, my very own.
It's just my size.
And sometimes I like to sleep alone
with dreams inside my eyes.
But sometimes dreams are dark and wild and creepy
and I wake and am afraid, though I don't know why.
But I'm no longer sleepy
and too slowly the hours go by.
So I climb on the bed where the light of the moon
is shining on your face
and I know it will be morning soon.
Everybody needs a safe place. — Mary Oliver

You're looking, moment by moment and scene by scene, how you can tell the most interesting story. So, we had this great short and we knew that we had a story about a boy and his dog. Because we had that pure emotional core, we could go on crazy tangents and always come back to Victor and Sparky. When I wrote in stuff like Weird Girl and the cat poop, Dutch Day and the windmill, it felt like it was part of Tim's universe. — John August

What the altar-bound of today end up buying from their numberless vendors is a dog's breakfast of bridal excess - part society wedding of the twenties, part Long Island Italian wedding of the fifties. It's The Philadelphia Story and The Wedding Singer served up together in one curious and costly buffet. — Caitlin Flanagan

[Tyson] looked him over with that massive baby-brown eye. "You are not dead. I like it when you are not dead."
Ella fluttered to the ground and began preening her feathers. "Ella found a dog," she announced. "A large dog. And a Cyclops." Was she blushing?
Before Percy could decide, his black mastiff pounced on him, knocking Percy to the ground and barking so loudly that even Arion backed up. "Hey, Mrs. O'Leary," Percy said. "Yeah, I love you, too, girl. Good dog."
Hazel squeaked. "You have a hellhound named Mrs. O'Leary?"
"Long story. — Rick Riordan

Hen a war ends, what does that look like exactly?
do the cells in the body stop detonating themselves?
does the orphanage stop screaming for its mother?
when the sand in the desert has been melted down to glass
and our reflection is not something we can stand to look at
does the white flag make for a perfect blindfold?
yesterday i was told a story
about this little girl in Iraq, six-years-old,
who cannot fall asleep
because when she does
she dreams of nothing
but the day she watched her dog
eat her neighbor's corpse.
if you told her war is over
do you think she can sleep? — Andrea Gibson

I sat smiling wretchedly, my heart weeping for The Little Dog Laughed, for every well-turned phrase, for the little flecks of poetry through it, my first story, the best thing I could show for my whole life. It was the record of all that was good in me, approved and printed by the great J. C. Hackmuth, and she had torn it up and thrown it into a spittoon. — John Fante

As soon as Joe was done feeding Ira Kenby's fucking dog, he was going to call social services again, and Casey would be taken to a home that would be more appropriate for a runaway. So really, Joe would say, they owed much of their lives together to a senile old man and a dog tortured by hunger to the point it didn't know better. (Casey would always reply that they would have met again, because there was just no way they could have lived without each other, but Joe's faith didn't run that deep. Casey would say that was because Joe didn't have a Josiah Daniels in his life, and Joe would shake his head and walk off, but that was later in their story.) — Amy Lane

For my little dog, Pip, who joined our family during the writing of
this story. Thanks for rescuing me. — Jackie Braun

Since i couldn't remember the "real" first time i'd lost my virginity, this would have become my de facto first time. I wanted a better story then: I did it with this boy who i wasn't very into and who had mysterious Gaterade breath; in his room decorated with sports equipment; at least he was nice enough to provide condoms and get his ancient, horny dog to leave us along. — Gabrielle Zevin

People love dogs. You can never go wrong adding a dog to the story. — Jim Butcher

Fiction writing is like duck hunting. You go to the right place at the right time with the right dog. You get into the water before dawn, wearing a little protective gear, then you stand behind some reeds and wait for the story to present itself ... You choose the place and the day. You pick the gun and the dog. You have the desire to blow the duck apart for reasons that are entirely your own. But you have to be willing to accept not what you wanted to have happen, but what happens ... By the time you get out of the marsh, you will have written a novel so devoid of ducks it will shock you. — Ann Patchett

free." On the edge of town, Fitzgerald saw a sight "that has never left my memory. It was a picture story of the death of one 82nd Airborne trooper. He had occupied a German foxhole and made it his personal Alamo. In a half circle around the hole lay the bodies of nine German soldiers. The body closest to the hole was only three feet away, a potato masher [grenade] in its fist.II The other distorted forms lay where they had fallen, testimony to the ferocity of the fight. His ammunition bandoliers were still on his shoulders, empty of M-1 clips. Cartridge cases littered the ground. His rifle stock was broken in two. He had fought alone and, like many others that night, he had died alone. "I looked at his dog tags. The name read Martin V. Hersh. I wrote the name down in a small prayer book I carried, hoping someday I would meet someone who knew him. I never did."34 — Stephen E. Ambrose

Honey, I don't understand that story. What does it mean?"
"It means stick with the dog you know, Auntie Jean", Max told her. "Stick with the dog you know. — Emmy Laybourne

Be alert as you watch a dog at play or at rest. Let the animal teach you to feel at home in the now, to celebrate life by being completely present. You just watch the tail ... with some dogs you just look at them - just a little look is enough - and their tail goes ... 'Life is good! Life is good!' And they are not telling themselves a story of why life is good. It's a direct realization. — Eckhart Tolle

If a dog can love us unconditionally, why can't we love each other in the same way? — Carol McKibben

I knew there was a story; once you find a dog with a fork through it, you know there's a story there. — Mark Haddon

Alcibiades had a very handsome dog, that cost him seven thousand drachmas; and he cut off his tail, "that," said he, "the Athenians may have this story to tell of me, and may concern themselves no further with me. — Plutarch

The reward you get from a story is always less than you thought it would be, and the work is harder than you imagined. The point of a story is never about the ending, remember. It's about your character getting molded in the hard work of the middle. At some point the shore behind you stops getting smaller, and you paddle and wonder why the same strokes that used to move you now only rock the boat. You got the wife, but you don't know if you like her anymore and you've only been married for five years. You want to wake up and walk into the living room in your underwear and watch football and let your daughters play with the dog because the far shore doesn't get closer no matter how hard you paddle.

The shore you left is just as distant, and there is no going back; there is only the decision to paddle in place or stop, slide out of the hatch, and sink into the sea. Maybe there's another story at the bottom of the sea. Maybe you don't have to be in this story anymore. — Donald Miller

I read the Odyssey because it was the story of a man who returned home after being absent for more than twenty years and was recognized only by his dog. — Guillermo Cabrera Infante

I have seen a large dog fox several times recently but it was a hot afternoon and no doubt, like most creatures, it was lying low in the shade. The fox has an unfortunate reputation. A crafty thief, often a charming one in fable and fairy story, its name is a byword for low (and occasionally high) cunning. A moral outlaw, a trickster and sometimes downright malevolent. The Christian Church often equated the fox with the devil. In many churches across the land you will find images of the fox in priestly robes preaching to a flock of geese. (There is a fine woodcut in the Cathedral at Ely.) The fox is a subtle outlaw, a devilish predator without conscience, and the geese a flock of innocents ... — Kate Atkinson

Next week John Boehner will be sitting behind Barack Obama at the State of the Union address. I think Obama should purposely try to embarrass him by telling the story of 'Old Yeller.' The state of our Union is strong, but not so good for one special dog.' — Bill Maher

Wherefore, I beseech you let the dog and the onions and these people of the strange and godless names work out their several salvations from their piteous and wonderful difficulties without help of mine, for indeed their trouble is sufficient as it is, whereas an I tried to help I should but damage their cause the more and yet mayhap not live myself to see the desolation wrought. — Mark Twain

Humans will always tell you the story. Dogs can only tell you the truth. Trust your instincts and listen your dog. — Cesar Millan

I don't know if you've ever seen some of the Sidney Lumet movies, like Dog Day Afternoon [1975] or Network [1976]. They're real events that happen in real time, and there are all of these different characters experiencing the same thing in different parts of the movie ... I am so bad at explaining my films. But it's in the world of finance and the world of media, and how they connect. It was a big undertaking. A big, mainstream movie, which stars Julia Roberts and George Clooney. But for me, it's really just a small story about character and people. — Jodie Foster

Oh, is that my report, father?' said Mike, with a sort of sickly interest, much as a dog about to be washed might evince in his tub.'
- Mike and Psmith — P.G. Wodehouse

Really, Rachel. It's old news. And Alex won't be interested. She's not even a proper journalist. She does the animal column, obsessed with dogs. I remember her seeing the story. She said she had no time for the man. He'd raised some ludicrous idea about people not being allowed to have more than one dog or something. — Mary Grand

My story is about all I got to my name right now, and that's why I feel robbed. But a story's a whole lot more than most people got. All you people watching out there, you're listening to what I say because I have something you don't: I got plot. Bought and paid for. That's what all you people want, and why you're sucking off me. You want my plot. I know how you feel too, since hey, I used to feel the same way. TV and video games and movies and computer screens ... On April 8th, 1999, I jumped into the screen, I switched to watchee. Ever since, I've known what my life is about. I give good story. It may have been kinda gory, but admit it, you all loved it. You ate it up. Nuts, I ought to be on some government payroll. Without people like me, the whole country would jump off a bridge, 'cause the only thing on TV is some housewife on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? winning $64,000 for remembering the name of the president's dog. — Lionel Shriver

Strange medical news from Pakistan: A man had a successful organ transplant with a dog. They gave the man a dog's organ. In a related story today, Keith Richards was seen chasing a mailman. — Craig Kilborn

Sim would begin: 'there was a herd in Manar, they ca'd him Tweedie - ye'll mind Tweedie, Can'lish?' 'Fine, that!' said Candlish. 'Aweel, Tweedie had a dog - ' The story I have forgotten; I dare say it was dull, and I suspect it was not true; but indeed, my travels with the drove rendered me indulgent, and perhaps even credulous, in the matter of dog stories. — Anonymous

America's vulnerability comes precisely from its strength, its wealth, its power and its modernity. It's the usual story of the dog chasing its own tail. — Oriana Fallaci

Because Naughty Dog relies on their facial team to hand animate the faces of each game character and they do such a remarkable job, I think you can be more realistic with your acting. It gives the story and what's happening to you the feeling that it's a game. — Nolan North

There is a story they tell of two dogs. Both at separate times walk into the same room. One comes out wagging his tail while the other comes out growling. A woman watching this goes into the room to see what could possibly make one dog so happy and the other so mad. To her surprise she finds a room filled with mirrors. The happy dog found a thousand happy dogs looking back at him while the angry dog saw only angry dogs growling back at him. What you see in the world around you is a reflection of who you are. — Anonymous

American writers often say they find it difficult to write Superman. They say he's too powerful; you can't give him problems. But Superman is a metaphor. For me, Superman has the same problems we do, but on a Paul Bunyan scale. If Superman walks the dog, he walks it around the asteroid belt because it can fly in space. When Superman's relatives visit, they come from the 31st century and bring some hellish monster conqueror from the future. But it's still a story about your relatives visiting. — Grant Morrison

In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder. The country is preferable to the town, a well-to-do neighborhood (but not too well-to-do-or there will be a suspicion of ill-gotten gains) better than a slum. The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawing room carpet."

(The guilty vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict, Harper's Magazine, May 1948) — W. H. Auden

There's a difference between doing memoir and writing a novel. If I had put the story of the boy killing my dog - and that was Eric also, what a little monster he was! - in a novel, even if I took it directly from life, it would be fiction. — Paul Auster

The story of the Utah prairie dog is the story of the range of our compassion. If we can extend our idea of community to include the lowliest of creatures, call them 'the untouchables', then we will indeed be closer to a path of peace and tolerance. if we cannot accommodate 'the other', the shadow we will see on our own home ground will be the forecast of our own species' extended winter of the soul. — Terry Tempest Williams

With a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man he was at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed
he has developed with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Dog. — Graham Greene

Edgar Sawtelle is a boy without a voice, but his world, populated by the dogs his family breeds, is anything but silent. This is a remarkable story about the language of friendship - a language that transcends words. — Dalia Sofer

Ah, stardom! They put your name on a star in the sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard and you walk down and find a pile of dog manure on it. That tells the whole story, baby. — Lee Marvin

One of the problems with all of this is that not all narratives are equal. Imagine, to take a silly example, that someone told you story after story extolling the virtues of eating dog shit. You've been told these stories since you were a child. You believe them. You eat dog shit hotdogs, dog shit ice cream, General Tso's dog shit. Sooner or later, if you are exposed to some other foods, you might figure out that dog shit really doesn't taste good. Or if you cling too tightly to these stories (or if your enculturation is so strong that dog shit actually does taste good to you), the diet might make you sick or kill you. To make this example a little less silly, substitute the word pesticides for dog shit. Or, for that matter, substitute Big Mac, Whopper, or Coca Cola. — Derrick Jensen

Humans are aware of very little, it seems to me, the artificial brainy side of life, the worries and bills and the mechanisms of jobs, the doltish psychologies we've placed over our lives like a stencil. A dog keeps his life simple and unadorned. — Brad Watson

So a dog's value came from the training AND the breeding. And by breeding, Edgar supposed he meant both the bloodlines - the particular dogs in their ancestry - and all the information in the file cabinets. Because the files, with their photographs, measurements, notes, charts, cross-references, and scores, told the STORY of the dog - what a MEANT as his father put it. — David Wroblewski

With 'Moreau,' it's been particularly confusing because I started out being the writer of the screenplay and then trying to be the director, then being moved from being the director and having to become the dog extra, it makes some kind of sense to suddenly become a character in the story. — Richard Stanley

A story told me by Michael Barrie: Jesus and the Blessed Virgin go out to play golf. The Blessed Virgin is at the top of her form, drives and lands on the green. Jesus slices and lands in the bushes. A squirrel picks up the ball and runs off with it. A dog grab the squirrel, which still holds the ball in its mouth. An eagle swoops down, picks up the dog, squirrel and ball, and soars into the air. Out of a clear sky, lightning strikes the eagle, which drops the dog which drops the squirrel which drops the ball, right into the hole. The Blessed Virgin throws down her driver and exclaims indignantly, 'Look, are you going to play golf or just fuck around? — Christopher Isherwood

In August of 1998, I completed Seize the Night, the sequel to my novel Fear Nothing, one of many of my books in which a dog is among the cast of principal characters. Every time I wrote a story that included a canine, my yearning for a dog grew. Readers and critics alike said I had an uncanny knack for writing convincingly about dogs and even for writing from a dog's point of view. When a story contained a canine character, I always felt especially inspired, as if some angel watching over me was trying to tell me that dogs were a fundamental part of my destiny if only I would listen. — Dean Koontz

A couple of months ago someone had tried to hand William the old story about there being a dog in the city that could talk. That was the third time this year. William had explained that it was an urban myth. It was always a friend of a friend who had heard it talk, and it was never anyone who had seen the dog. The dog in front of William didn't look as if it could talk, but it did look as if it could swear. There — Terry Pratchett

I'd heard once in school that if a single bird were to transport all the sand, grain by grain, from the eastern seabord to the west coast of Africa, it would take ... I didn't catch the number of years, preferring to concentrate on the single bird chosen to perform this thankless task. It hardly seemed fair, because, unlike a horse or a Seeing Eye dog, the whole glory of being a bird is that nobody would ever put you to work. Birds search for grubs and build their nests, but their leisure time is theirs to spend as they see fit. I pictured this bird looking down from the branches to say, "You want me to do what?" before flying off, laughing at the at the foolish story he now had to tell his friends. — David Sedaris

If your characters write your story, rather than you writing your characters, it's like your dog taking YOU for a walk. Don't let them control you. Take charge and train them to listen to their master. — Jessica Bell

I heard one story about an octopus in a home tank who would get out, cruise around the house, take knick-knacks, and drag them back to its tank. Like a dog! They're so smart that there are octopus enrichment handbooks so you don't bore your octopus. I've seen them play with Legos, Mr. Potato Head, you name it! — Sy Montgomery

Forty dollars for one adult nonrefundable ticket. You're in luck - your bus leaves in a half hour. But there's no dogs, unless that's a service animal."
"Oh, yeah," Call said, with a quick look down at Havoc. "He's totally a service dog. He was in the service - the navy, actually."
The woman's eyebrows went up.
"He saved a man," Call said, trying out the story as he counted the cash and pushed it through the slot. "From drowning. And sharks. Well, just the one shark, but it was a pretty big one. He's got a medal and everything. — Cassandra Clare

Dammit? Why would you give a dog such a name? Or is that a third date story too?"
"No, it's only a dog story." Rhett smiled and the temperature in the store shot up several degrees. "I named him Lambert after Miranda Lambert, but I guess he didn't like bein' named after a girl, so he sat there like a knot on a log every time I called him. So I'd say, 'Dammit, come here.' And here he'd come runnin' hell-bent for leather. So I gave up and called him Dammit. — Carolyn Brown

People know us best for our entrepreneurial success as the founders of Three Dog Bakery; what they don't know is that we owe it all to a gigantic deaf dog named Gracie. But even though Gracie sowed the seeds of our success, this isn't a book about "making it." This is the story of a dog who was born with the cards stacked against her, but whose passionate, joyful nature helped her turn what could have been a dog's life into a victory of the canine spirit - and, in the process, save two guys who thought they were saving her. — Dan Dye

Now this girl was about twenty-one years old. A sweet little coed. Spends a night with a married man. Goes home the next day and tells her mama and daddy. Don't ask me why. Maybe just to rub their faces in it. They decide she needs a lesson. Whole family drives out into the desert, right out to that spot we just passed. All three of them plus the girl's pet dog. Papa tells the girl to dig a shallow grave. Mama gets down on her hands and knees and holds the dog by the collar. When the girl is all through digging, papa gives her a .22 caliber revolver and tells her to shoot the dog. A real touching family scene. Make a good calendar for some religious group to give away. The girl puts the weapon to her temple and kills herself. Now isn't that a heartwarming story? Restores my faith in just about everything. — Don DeLillo

Somewhere around the place I've got an unfinished short story about Schrodinger's Dog; it was mostly moaning about all the attention the cat was getting. — Terry Pratchett

This is weird, I feel like I should be telling you a story right now. Oberon — Kevin Hearne

David Langford, illustrates the difference between teaching and
learning in a little story. He says, 'You know, last Wednesday I
taught my dog to whistle. I really did. I taught him to whistle. It
was hard work. I really went at it very hard. But I taught him to
whistle. Of course, he didn't learn, but I taught.' — Myron Tribus

An abiding preoccupation for me is how much of our lives are invisible and unknown by other people, like the Chekhov story 'The Lady With the Little Dog.' — Claire Messud

Although I don't know for sure, I'd bet my dog and lot that John Grisham never worked for the mob. All of that is total fabrication (and total fabrication is the fiction-writer's purest delight). He was once a young lawyer, though, and he has clearly forgotten none of the struggle. Nor has he forgotten the location of the various financial pitfalls and honeytraps that make the field of corporate law so difficult. Using plainspun humor as a brilliant counterpoint and never substituting cant for story, he sketches a world of Darwinian struggle where all the savages wear three-piece suits. And - here's the good part - this is a world impossible not to believe. Grisham has been there, spied out the land and the enemy positions, and brought back a full report. He told the truth of what he knew, and for that if nothing else, he deserves every buck The Firm made. — Stephen King

Those who remember only that the Roosevelts served hot dogs to the royals will be fascinated by this well-researched account of an historic and ennobling relationship - a great story! — James MacGregor Burns

Like Frankenweenie is a story about a boy and his dog, Big Fish is the story of a father and his son, and all those conversations you can't have. It's universal, in a way that can go from one medium to another medium. That's been the funnest, figuring out what we can do in a Broadway show that's unique and special. — John August

Rush Limbaugh, we expect nonsense from him. But the Vatican, that's another story. When the Vatican is so threatened that it launches attacks on nuns, well, you know what they say in politics, a hit dog hollers. — Jennifer Granholm

Yearning and struggle in the voices of the elders at Red Lake. They, too, had lost their identities. They, too, were no longer themselves, and it was this fate that they so wanted to help the young people avoid by sharing their stories. More than anything else I had written, Neither Wolf nor Dog had let people be themselves and see themselves. Was I breaking my own promise and abdicating my moral responsibility by refusing to tell more of Dan's story, simply because I did not want to deal with the questions and challenges that it posed? — Kent Nerburn