I think on a day-to-day basis, what attracts us in coexisting with another living, evolving thing, is that you have a relationship that's different than with a piece of furniture. We experience the cycle of life through these other beings.

I didn't want to talk, and I didn't think dogs could solve my problems. But they were so uncritical and un-judgmental. Sometimes when you're really blue, you don't want to talk, but you want that sense of companionship. I certainly enjoy that with my beasts.

I suppose I do have one embarrassing passion- I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.

My ace in the hole as a human being used to be my capacity for remembering birthdays. I worked at it. Whenever I made a new friend, I made a point of finding out his or her birthday early on, and I would record it in my Filofax calendar.

In my perfect world, we would establish perhaps four national zoos of unimpeachable quality and close the rest of them.

Even after I'd published three books and had been writing full-time for twenty years, my father continued to urge me to go to law school.

Knowledge is a beautiful thing, but there are a few things I wish I didn't know.