W. Bruce Cameron

Without a dog, I would have tassels on my throw pillows instead of little stubs of yarn that look like small worms. The pillows seem to function just fine without the tassels, so perhaps it isn't a problem.

Communicating with teenage girls is easy unless you're an adult, and then it's like having someone take a pair of pliers and, one-by-one, yank off your fingernails through your ears.

I know it sounds strange, but I'm one of those people who goes to a coffee shop to drink coffee.

My dog Tucker likes to walk late at night because it is a good way to keep me awake. Apparently, the one time I took him for a stroll around midnight represented, to him, a commitment similar to marriage.

I've tried several diets over the past couple of years - not because I need to lose weight, but because my pants are trying to cut me in two.

In my opinion, it has never been proven that food even has calories. When I bite into a hamburger, I see pickle and ketchup and bun and meat, but if there's a calorie in there, it must be hidden.

Without a dog, you'll be without at least one creature who thinks you are the smartest, most decent and heroic human being on the planet.

Without a dog, no one will listen to your opinions for more than a few minutes without interrupting to tell you their opinions, which you won't find nearly as interesting.

Without a dog, you'd never have anyone demonstrate how important it is to stop every day and smell the roses... and then lift your leg on them.

Not too many people know it, but when I was in junior high, I was a pretty tough kid and was the leader of a street gang. Well, OK, it was less a street gang than an Ecology Club. We were pretty intimidating, though, and had our own meeting room until we got run out of there by a bunch of thugs from the Poetry Society.

An ice-fishing shanty is basically a tin outhouse on a frozen lake, except that in an outhouse, the hole has a purpose. In ice fishing, the hole is what you stare at for hours, hoping that at some point you'll break the monotony by falling in.

During the holidays, I often see my sisters, who still, even after all these years, can't always seem to agree with me. They take silly, indefensible positions, such as denying that my parents loved me more because I was the better child.

My body believes a famine is imminent and has begun stocking up on provisions. These supplies are being stored around my waistline. I've tried explaining to my stomach that this is entirely unnecessary: I've never once, not even when I was in college and more broke than the E.U., done any actual starving.

My mother taught me to drive using the 'Detroit Method,' where speed limits and traffic lights are taken as cute suggestions.

I think, of all the holidays we celebrate, my least favorite is Earth Day. For one thing, I never know what sort of gift is appropriate. A jar of dirt, maybe? And it's not clear to me why Earth even needs a 'day,' since a spin on its axis creates a day. That's like giving a man who owns a shoe store a gift of a pair of shoes.

Even if you've gone easy on the vermouth, there are still serious downsides to alcohol consumption, including but not limited to the sense that you're a good dancer.

Pre-history tells us that our species used to be a hunter-gatherer society. This means that the job of raising a family was split 50-50 between the men and the women - the man's 50 percent share was to sit in the woods with a sharp stick, waiting for something to hunt to wander by, and the woman's 50 percent was to do everything else.

Your neighbors will be envious of your 3D printer - and if they're not, just print new neighbors. Design them so they'll like to bring you pies, maybe, or want to do your yard work for you.

You'd think skiing wouldn't be strenuous - all you have to do, after all, is start at the top and let gravity pull you to the dessert bar in the lodge. But at those elevations, you'll find about as much oxygen as you'll find kindness from your children. It's like spending six hours holding your breath.

About the most exciting thing a baby can do is burp - I've spent hours of my life holding a baby on my shoulder and patting its back, trying to loosen up a burp. Burping was probably invented to give the father something positive to do, since our chests are not equipped to allow us to do much else.

As to which is cuter, a puppy or a baby, I'm going to say that probably depends less on the particular puppy and more on the baby. I've seen pictures of me as an infant and consider myself lucky that nobody ever offered my parents the opportunity to trade me for a beagle.

Throughout the day, my phone will variously chirp, burp and growl - it's like living with a velociraptor. The last time I went to try to shut it off, the thing bit me.

The first cellphone I owned was hardly a slim, high-tech device - it was more like a brick with buttons, only with worse reception. If you wanted to use your phone to give someone a message, you were better off throwing it at him and hoping you broke his car window.

When I was in seventh grade, I was a scrawny boy with no muscles, so I went out for wrestling. My intention was to develop secret wrestling skills so that if I were jumped by a bully, I'd shout, 'Ha!' and he'd be on the ground in a headlock.

I am an independent, strong-willed, free, and unfettered individual who lets his wife decide for him what he wants to eat.

There are apparently three factors that lead to longevity: heredity, habits, and what your wife will let you get away with.

For me, the most indispensable tool for wrapping presents is a wife.

With a 3D printer, you could build your own car, one part at a time. When you were finished, you'd have an automobile that is extremely lightweight because it is made of plastic, which is good because you'd need to carry it because it is made of plastic.

My favorite ski slope is the kind that winds up at the cafeteria. My children, though, usually insist that I get out and take on a few expert runs, in a game called 'Let's See if We Can Get Our Inheritance Early.'

My philosophy on snow skiing is that there are less expensive ways to fall down a mountain. Yet every couple of years, I go on a ski trip for the same reason that women will have multiple children - they simply forget how much it hurts.

I am the sort of athlete who participates in a lot of winter sports - basketball, for example, is an activity that I'll spend many hours a week watching.

I've always been busy, but I wasn't always successful.

I started writing in fourth grade and never stopped. I faked my way through high school and nearly was flushed from college - I still can't pay attention - and then had a series of day jobs. But always, continuously, I have written.

I am a newspaper columnist and a professional screenwriter, but my real love is the novel for all the room it has for characters to come alive and breathe and face their challenges.

I have never been able to pay attention to anything for more than a few minutes - the stories in my head have always been so much more entertaining. Only books could pull me out of my own imagination, and then it was only to plunge me into someone else's.

When I was in grade school, my teachers decided I was just about the dumbest thing to come through the door in a long time. Whatever the lesson, whatever the subject, I would sit and listen to them with a lost, glassy-eyed expression on my face.

3D printers give us what we've all been craving: another reason to talk to technical support. When you finally get the thing working, though, you'll be able to print out your grocery list as a cube! When you look up directions online, you can print the map out on a globe!

I think I'm good at training dogs, but none of my dogs agree with me on that.

My advice to anybody, including myself, is if you're going through a bad period, and you just can't see the world's on your shoulders and no day is a good day, you're missing the whole point of the experience. And that's something dogs know from the moment they come bounding up to you as a puppy.

God invented love, and it is therefore perfect, and dogs are better at celebrating this perfection than we are. When in doubt as to how we should feel, we could do far worse than trying to live life like the dogs.

Going to bed can cause imaginary conversations you should have had with certain people or real conversations with your brother who is calling from a bar in a different time zone.

My dog's name is Tucker, and his DNA is unidentifiable and suspect.

I was riding my mountain bike in Colorado, and I met a dog who reminded me so much of my very first dog in the way she interacted with me, looked at me, and wagged her tail that I rode away convinced I'd just very possibly met the reincarnated version of my long lost friend.

I am stunned by how much time and effort I must spend marketing my book and interacting with my readers. With social media, you don't just publish a book and figure you've done your part; your fans want to talk to you, have a conversation.

With my book 'How to Remodel a Man,' I was on Oprah, Fox News, the Early Show, and Good Morning America. Oprah was the best - an hour long segment. TV is so short; you answer a few questions, and then it's over. It feels like a hit-and-run with a camera.

I read that all dogs have wolf DNA in them, which seemed preposterous because my dog, Tucker, is... afraid of plastic bags blowing in the wind. I thought, 'How can Tucker have wolf in him? How can this be?' So I started researching it.

We have enforced a Darwinian process on wolves, turning them into the shy and elusive animals they've become. They didn't have that fear of us 30,000 years ago. We didn't have gunpowder; we had rocks. Wolves would have seen us as lunch, and we were weak and slow and tasty.

The loneliest, most down-on-his-luck person can have a dog who adores him. The most bitter, sour person can light up with joy when he sees his dog. It is magical, and as 'The Dog Master' reveals, it is biological - we evolved together.

My main characters are the most sunny, happy, optimistic, loving creatures on the face of the Earth. I couldn't be happier that's where I start. I can put as many flawed people in the dog's world as I like, but the dog doesn't care. Dog doesn't judge. Dog doesn't dislike. Dog loves. That's not so bad.

I see dog stories as an antidote to the dire news that nothing is ever going to get better.