Quotes from Fifteen Dogs

“Perfect understanding between beings is no guarantor of happiness. To perfectly understand another's madness, for instance, is to be mad oneself. The veil that separates earthly beings is, at times, a tragic barrier, but it is also, at times, a great kindness.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“Nira was uncomfortable with power or even with the appearance of it. One day, she asked Majnoun if he would put her on a leash, their positions being reversed. He had answered ‘no,’ and this had made Nira feel even more uncomfortable. But Majnoun had, in fact, misunderstood her question. If she had said – Masters have agreed that their submissives must be bound to them with leashes and collars. If you were a master, would you keep me on a leash? Majnoun would, without hesitation, have answered ‘yes.’ If she had been his submissive, he would naturally have treated her according to the custom. Order in a pack is maintained through convention, and it made no sense, as far as Majnoun was concerned, to overturn conventions that worked. But he had understood her question on a more practical level. He had thought of how awkward it would be for him to hold a leash in his mouth while Nira walked about on her hands and knees. Understanding the question as he had, the only possible answer had been the ‘no’ he’d given.)”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“...you can't know what a life has been until it is over.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“The grass is wet on the hill. The sky has no end. For the dog who waits for his mistress, Madge, noon comes again.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“Beyond the hills, a master is who knows our secret names. With bell and bones, he’ll call us home, winter, fall or spring.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“The light that moves is not the light. The light that stays is not the light. The true light rose countless sleeps ago. It rose, even in the mouth of birds.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“– And yet, said Atticus, I am sometimes afraid that I will not know the feeling again, that I will never again know what it is to be a dog among dogs. This thinking of yours, black dog, it is an endless, dead field. Since the change, I have been alone with thoughts I do not want.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“... she refused to allow anyone - even Miguel - to refer to Majnoun as 'her' dog.
- I'm as much his as he's mine, she'd insist.
Her friends - and her husband - thought this an annoying eccentricity. Majnoun knew what she meant - that she was not his master - and he was grateful. But in his heart he felt as if he did belong to her, in the sense that he was a part of Nira and she a part of him.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“Just listen to these people. You'd swear they understood each other though not one of them has any idea what their words actually mean to another.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“In the sunny world, with its small things moving too fast, I shy away from light and in the attic cuss the dark.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“What is the name of he who comes with eyes closed and fingers black, the one who draws the curtains back when dawn has come? ‘Agha Thanatos’ or just plain ‘Death’? When will I know which is right?”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“One morning, they discovered that they’d dreamed of the same field, the same clouds, the same house in the distance – wooden with a red-brick chimney. They had dreamed of the same squirrels and rabbits. They had drunk from the same clear stream. There was only one difference: when Nira, in her dream, looked into the water, she saw Majnoun’s face reflected back at her, while Majnoun, in his, saw Nira’s face where his should have been. The fact of this shared dream was so moving to Nira that, ever after, she refused to allow anyone – even Miguel – to refer to Majnoun as ‘her’ dog.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“This new thinking leads away from the pack, but a dog is no dog if he does not belong.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“We bound into the prairie through ages of Winter grass, taking the path Ina took. Her name long gone, though her roads linger. The ground will not forget. or   Longing to be sprayed (the green snake writhing in his master’s hand), back and forth into that stream – jump, rinse: coat slick with soap.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“In the golden tent of early morning when the sky has turned its back when the sky has turned its back and isn’t listening when the scallops stand upright on their hinges …”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“Prince's words had not been meant as a warning. Rather, he had been playing. He had been pretending. He had been speaking for speaking's sake. Could there be a more despicable use for words?”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“With one paw, trying the edges of the winter pond, finding its waters solid, he advances, nails sliding, still far from home.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“Summer is full of smoke, and endless lawns. Quietly, whether across moss or on algae, knee over the railing of the little porch, fate comes.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“then there were those sessions that smelled of cow. During these, Randy would wear black leather (with parts of himself exposed) and plead while Clare struck him with a riding crop. Most remarkably, it was then she who would penetrate Randy. More: Randy’s pleadings were, in the bedroom, as pathetic as Clare’s sometimes were in the real world, yet both of them seemed to desire these moments during which Clare was fully and admirably dominant”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“The lake comes to the fringe while lights go up around the bay. Somewhere near, cow flesh is singed. Smoke floats above the walkway. I’ve eaten green that comes up black, risen cold from torrid mud. I’ve licked my paws and tasted blood. What is this world of busy lies? Some urban genie feeding food to flies!”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“¿Estamos hablando de seres felices o de vidas felices? No, déjalo. En cualquier caso, acepto tus condiciones. La inteligencia humana no es un don, sino una calamidad que a veces resulta útil. ¿Qué animales eliges?”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“why is there day, why must night come … – Pablo Neruda, ‘Ode to a Dog”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“He was a committed leader, capable of - or prone to - instinctive decisions. More: he could put aside thought in the service of forceful action. But in quiet moments his sensitivity sometimes led him to reconsider his own behaviour. In other words, Atticus had a conscience, and it was this that led him to what some would call faith.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“The leaves, they run like mice, while birds peck at the ground. The wood has rotted in its bin. The grim axe has come round”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“The white dogs with black spots were the worst. It wasn't so much their aggression; other dogs were sometimes even more aggressive. It was that they were - without question - the stupidest creatures on earth, and that was even if one included cats. It was useless to try reasoning with them, whatever language one chose. Worse, you could never tell when one of them would come at you. It was not in his nature to hate other dogs, but Benjy disliked Dalmatians the way some humans dislike men named Steve or Biff.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“I am dismayed to be in season. I curse men who think of me as food and dream of rickshaws, and lacquered wood.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“If rackabones eat up the sky, if words spring out of rock, my soul will wind down and life run out the clock.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

“Also intriguing was all the bowing. The association of height and status did not, of course, faze him. If anything, it made the Japanese seem noble. But where were the ones who made themselves big? That was the question. With so many people bowing down, it seemed to Majnoun like a competition amongst the low to see who could be lowest. In which case, discretion was strength, a paradox that Majnoun found almost as compelling as the film's relative absence of dogs.”
― André Alexis, quote from Fifteen Dogs

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Their view; it is cosmic. Not of man here, a child there, but an abstraction: race, land. Volk. Land. Blut. Ehre. Not of honorable men but of Ehre itself, honor; the abstract is real, the actual is invisible to them. Die Gute, but not good men, this good man. It is their sense of space and time. They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; there was once only the dust particles in space, the hot hydrogen gases, nothing more, and it will come again. This is an interval, ein Augenblick. The cosmic process is hurrying on, crushing life back into the granite and methane; the wheel turns for all life. It is all temporary. And they-these madmen-respond to the granite, the dust, the longing of the inanimate; they want to aid Natur.

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What they do not comprehend is man's helplessness. I am weak, small, of no consequence to the universe. It does not notice me; I live on unseen. But why is that bad? Isn't it better that way? Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small...and you will escape the jealousy of the great.”
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