Patrick Ness Quotes

Many dogs can understand almost every word humans say, while humans seldom learn to recognize more than half a dozen barks, if that. And barks are only a small part of the dog language. A wagging tail can mean so many things. Humans know that it means a dog is pleased, but not what a dog is saying about his pleasedness.

I've read that an average dog possesses a vocabulary of 200-300 words, which is enough for him to have his own Twitter account.

All dogs seem to be great linguists, according to their owners. They always understand every word that's said to them.

Dog's listen, or appear to listen. I think they hear blah, blah, blah, FOOD, blah, blah, blah. They appear to be listening to you.

I don't need to kill goats to say things. I CAN talk.

I gave him his first TV and he needs to remember that.

I bought a dog the other day. . . . I named him Stay. It's fun to call him. . . . "Come here, Stay! Come here, Stay!" He went insane. Now he just ignores me and keeps typing.

First I went left, he did too. Then I went right, and he did too. Then I went left again, and he went to buy a hot dog.

We all go about longing for love: it is the first need of our natures, the loudest cry of our hearts.

Is it not first through the voice that one becomes animal?

Everything I know, I learned from dogs.

My cat brought me a toy. I thanked her and threw it. She sat there gave me a look that made me realize people and dogs are the crazy ones.

When most of us talk to our dogs, we tend to forget that they're not people.

Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way.

You need to make sure everyone is healthy first and foremost.

A dog, I will maintain, is a very tolerable judge of beauty, as appears from the fact that any liberally educated dog does, in a general way, prefer a woman to a man.

Acknowledgemen t of what you feel, what you know, what you need is the first step toward healing.

If youre a vegan who ran a marathon & got your dogs from a shelter, how do you decide which thing to wedge into the conversation first?

In the construction of Immortal Fame you need first of all a cosmic shamelessness.

Science has so far been unable to tell us how self-aware dogs are, much less whether they have anything like our conscious thoughts. This is not surprising, since neither scientists nor philosophers can agree about what the consciousness of humans consists of, let alone that of animals.

If dogs talked, one of them would be president by now. Everybody likes dogs.

What right do we have to claim, as some might, that human beings are the only inhabitants of our planet blessed with an actual ability to be "aware"? The impression of a "conscious presence" is indeed very strong with me when I look at a dog or a cat or, especially, when an ape or monkey at the zoo looks at me. I do not ask that they are "self-aware" in any strong sense (though I would guess that an element of self-awareness can be present). All I ask is that they sometimes simply feel!

I agree with Agassiz that dogs possess something very like conscience.

If we compare a severely defective human infant with a nonhuman animal, a dog or a pig, for example, we will often find the nonhuman to have superior capacities, both actual and potential, for rationality, self-consciousness, communication and anything else that can plausibly be considered morally significant.

We have a First Amendment for good reasons. We need a free press because without an educated electorate we cannot have a functioning democracy.