“When I breathe down my nose to say how do you do to a horse, it can hear that breath at anything up to twenty yards, for horses have the most acute sense of hearing.”

I do not believe that a dog can be cured by a psychiatrist, but I think some owners could be helped by one.

I believe that animals have been talking to human beings ever since we were all made and put into this world.

The dog has an enviable mind; it remembers the nice things in life and quickly blots out the nasty.

There is nothing a pig loves more than a good bath, with a loofah and plenty of soap flakes … There is something delightfully lovable about a really clean pig, in clean yellow straw.

I have caught more ills from people sneezing over me and giving me virus infections than from kissing dogs.

Dogs aren’t born knowing what or what not to do; they only learn like children.

Dogs understand your moods and your thoughts, and if you are thinking unpleasant things about your dog, he will pick it up and be downhearted.

Animals are so much quicker in picking up our thoughts than we are in picking up theirs. I believe they must have a very poor opinion of the human race.

I can train any dog in 5 minutes. It’s training the owner that takes longer.

There is no such thing as a difficult dog, only an inexperienced owner.

one has to give a great deal of oneself to animals if one is to get the best out of them.

I can not impress on my readers too strongly the necessity to be firm but kind to a puppy. His idea of your authority is forming, and if he knows you give in on the slightest whimper, you are wacked for life.

The eyes of a dog, the expression of a dog, the warmly wagging tail of a dog and the gloriously cold damp nose of a dog were in my opinion all God-given for one purpose only-to make complete fools of us human beings.

The society was so different [in China] – it was a feudalistic society. It didn’t come to a point of industrial revolution until twenty years ago.

I’m obsessed with adolescence. I love to write about people in their 20s.

When they called me with the Nobel call from Secretary General of the Swedish Academy it was twenty minutes to six and he said well that was well hope I’m not disturbing you but I am the Secretary General of the Swedish Academy.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go.

Permit us to labor on in obscurity,

Your twenties are the time to both accept and fight your way into the person you’re destined to become.

I think, for the majority of my twenties, I was always so concerned with what I didn’t have, or what I still wanted.

Why should I hold back now and sound mediocre, just so I can sound mediocre twenty years from now?