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. It is amazing how much love and laughter they bring into our lives and even how much closer we become with each other because of them.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.