I admire people who re-create themselves. And it seems to me that what gives us all the opportunity to be heroic in our own lives is that we work to heal ourselves and be better than we were yesterday.

At Lackland Air Force Base, they make an effort to retrain military dogs that suffer from PTSD. It's a lengthy, long process. The treatment is much the same as it would be for people, but it's a difficult road back.

The sense of smell in all dogs is their primary doorway to the world around them.

Adults always wonder what to say and how to say it when they're talking to a child. You want to be wise, but all you are is a child yourself in a larger body. Nothing is ever what it seems. The things that you think you know are never certain. I know that now. I wish that I didn't, but I do.

It's easy to sound good. All you do is leave in the parts where you act tough and forget the parts where you get shoved around.

My fiction is almost always inspired by a character's need or desire to rise above him- or herself. No one is perfect and some of us have much adversity in our lives; it is those people who struggle to rise above their nature or background that I find the most interesting and heroic.

A dog could see your heart in your eyes, Budress told him, and dogs were drawn to our hearts.