Homer's Odyssey

My philosophy when it came to pets was much like that of having children: You got what you got, and you loved them unconditionally regardless of whatever their personalities or flaws turned out to be.

So I didn't adopt Homer because he was cute and little and sweet, or because he was helpless and needed me. I adopted him because when you think you see something so fundamentally worthwhile in someone else, you don't look for the reasons - like bad timing or a negative bank balance - that might keep it out of your life. You commit to being strong enough to build your life around it, no matter what. In doing so, you begin to become the thing you admire.

I'd understood that when you see something so fundamentally worthwhile in somebody else, you don't look for all the reasons that might keep it out of your life. You commit to being strong enough to build your life around it, no matter what. In doing so, you begin to become the thing you admire.

The beauty of having nothing to lose is that you have everything to gain

If I had learned one thing from Homer over the years, it was that just because you couldn’t quite see your way out of a difficulty, that didn’t mean a way out didn’t exist.

What happened was that I caught a glimpse of something I desperately needed to believe in at that point in my life. I wanted to believe there could be something within you that was so essential and so courageous that nothing - no boyfriend, no employer, no trauma - could tarnish or rob you of it. And if you had that kind of unbreakable core, not only would it always be yours, but even in your darkest moments others would see it in you, and help you out before the worse came to the absolute worst.

A friend once asked me why it was that stories about animals and their heroism...are so compelling. ...we love them because they're the closest thing we have to material evidence of an objective moral order--or, to put it another way, they're the closest thing we have to proof of the existence of God. They seem to prove that the things that matter to and move us the most--things like love, courage, loyalty, altruism--aren't just ideas we made up from nothing. To see them demonstrated in other animals proves they're real things, that they exist in the world independently of what humans invent and tell each other in the form of myth or fable.

That was something else I’d learned from Homer—sometimes, to get the things that were good in life, you had to make a blind leap.

To be a person who loves books is to be half in love with the idea of New York.

Mocho was a Spanish word that meant maimed or referred to something that had been lopped off like a stump. To call Homer el mocho was, essentially, to call him "Stumpy" or "the maimed one." It doesn't sound particularly flattering, but among Spanish speakers the giving of nicknames is tantamount to a declaration of love. Things that would sound insulting outright in English were tokens of deep affection when said in Spanish.

Eğer Homeros'tan öğrendiğim aziz ve kıymetli bir hayat dersi varsa,o da bir canlının vaktini doldurmak için,zahmete değer projeler yaratmasının aslında ne kadar önemli olduğudur.

I think the thing that drove me craziest was wondering why? Why me, why my apartment? The most maddening thing to accept is that there usually isn’t a why. Or there probably is—because effects have causes—but you’ll never know what it was. Not knowing makes it impossible to avoid having the exact same thing happen again. But it’s also liberating. The world could be dangerous and bad things sometimes happened, but there was nothing you could do except live your life. And it would be foolish if, in the process of living it, you didn’t also enjoy it.

Growing up means learning to be responsible for others—and embracing the great joys those responsibilities can bring. Homer taught me that building my life around someone other than myself, making myself responsible for someone else’s life, is one of the most rewarding differences between being a kid and being an adult.

He had curled himself up into a minature sphere in the farthest corner of the box, a fuzzy softball that would have fit eaisly into the palm of my hand.

They seem to prove that the things that matter to and move us the most—things like love, courage, loyalty, altruism—aren’t just ideas we made up from nothing. To see them demonstrated in other animals proves they’re real things, that they exist in the world independently of what humans invent and tell each other in the form of myth or

Yes, he even romped like a normal kitten, despite his eyelessness. In short, he was eminently lovable … at least by all standards except the one with which most humans preoccupied themselves: his appearance. Finally,

Homer would scuttle up the side of my denim-clad leg (to this day, there’s nothing he loves climbing so much as a pair of jeans)

be a person who loves books is to be half in love with the idea of New York. After

sharp rap at the door, followed by an extremely welcome: “Police!

there’s one thing that’s the stuff of cats’ nightmares, it’s sudden and total immersion in water.