Top 50 William Bruce Cameron Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Not everything that can be counted counts. Not everything that counts can be counted.”

— William Bruce Cameron

2. “You can usually tell that a man is good if he has a dog who loves him.”

— William Bruce Cameron

3. “Because failure isn’t an option if success is just a matter of more effort.”

— William Bruce Cameron

4. “That’s the lesson of the dogs, that it’s important to both live in the moment and then go on to the next wonderful thing.”

— William Bruce Cameron

5. “Kansas is a piece of real estate that completely disproves the theory of roundness as a quality of the planet earth.”

— William Bruce Cameron

6. “Dogs have important jobs, like barking when the doorbell rings, but cats have no function in a house whatsoever.”

— William Bruce Cameron

7. “Some people just don’t appreciate having a dog around. It’s sad to think there are people like that. I knew Gloria was that way – maybe that’s why she could never be truly happy.”

— William Bruce Cameron

8. “You can’t run away from your problems. They’ll always find you.”

— William Bruce Cameron

9. “Yet did you know that every dog alive today has a little wolf DNA? Not just huskies, who often look like wolves, but pugs, corgis, poodles? Chuhuahuas – they sometimes act like they still are wolves.”

— William Bruce Cameron

10. “Apparently there are three levels of brain activity. Level 1 is the lowest level – the amount of concentration required to, say, delete emails or serve in congress.”

— William Bruce Cameron

11. “Humans were capable of so many amazing things, but too often they just sat making words, not doing anything.”

— William Bruce Cameron

12. “I remembered the boy crying the day they buried Smokey in the yard, and I hoped he wouldn’t cry over my death. My purpose, my whole life, had been to love him and be with him, to make him happy.”

— William Bruce Cameron

13. “I knew, though, that life was never that easy, that instead of doors being opened for you, to get anywhere, you had to jump over fences.”

— William Bruce Cameron

14. “Unit Eight-Kilo-Six, what’s your twenty?” the radio squawked. “Eight-Kilo-Six, we are proceeding up Amalfi.”

— William Bruce Cameron

15. “I realized that today I truly understood my purpose as Ellie: not just to Find people but to save them.”

— William Bruce Cameron

16. “As I sat in the sun on the wooden dock that jutted out into the pond, I knew this to be true: my name was Buddy, and I was a good dog.”

— William Bruce Cameron

17. “When she sat on the couch I jumped up to be with her and I put my head in her lap. I could feel some of the tension and sadness leave her. I was giving Mom comfort. This was more important than going for walks, more important than helping feed the cats – it was the most important job I had. I knew I should sit with Mom for as long as she needed me.”

— William Bruce Cameron

18. “It cannot be a dog’s purpose to understand what people want because it is impossible.”

— William Bruce Cameron

19. “Both boys ate some of the dog snacks, which I found both odd and disturbing.”

— William Bruce Cameron

20. “Human motivation is unfathomable to dogs, so I wasn’t sure why the two of us were separated, but I knew that when the time came, Ethan would Find me.”

— William Bruce Cameron

21. “Lennon said that life’s what happens when you’re making other plans.”

— William Bruce Cameron

22. “Somehow I knew that puppies were meant to leave their mothers.”

— William Bruce Cameron

23. “She taught me that it was a good thing to love more than just my boy, Ethan, opening my eyes to the fact that I’d actually loved many people in my lives, that loving humans was my ultimate purpose.”

— William Bruce Cameron

24. “Of all the things I’d ever done, making Senora laugh seemed the most important. It was, I reflected, the only thing that gave my life any purpose.”

— William Bruce Cameron

25. “I knew we were supposed to bark because CJ was always angry when someone knocked. “Hey! Stop! Quiet! Enough!” she would yell. I didn’t understand the words, but the meaning was clear: she was upset with the knocking and we should keep barking.”

— William Bruce Cameron

26. “It wasn’t as much fun as being a doodle dog, but I now knew why these creatures, these human beings, had so fascinated me from the moment I saw them. It was because my fate was inextricably linked with theirs.”

— William Bruce Cameron

27. “Humans know everything, not just how to take car rides or where to find bacon but also when dogs are good or bad and where dogs should sleep and what toys they should play with.”

— William Bruce Cameron

28. “I guess I had never bothered to consider that there might such a thing as a boy, but now that I had found one, I thought it was just about the most wonderful concept in the world. He smelled of mud and sugar and an animal I’d never scented before, and a faint meaty odor clung to his fingers, so I licked them.”

— William Bruce Cameron

29. “Dogs are not allowed to choose where they live; my fate would be decided by people.”

— William Bruce Cameron

30. “All I could do now was offer him comfort, the assurance that as he left this life he was not alone but rather was tended by the dog who loved him more than anything in the whole world.”

— William Bruce Cameron

31. “The rust-colored dog was named Pepper, I soon gathered, and as we walked we stopped at more places and soon had a brown female dog named Sally and a hairy, stocky male dog named Beevis, all on leashes in a most unnatural dog family.”

— William Bruce Cameron

32. “I will miss you, doodle dog,” Ethan said to me.”

— William Bruce Cameron

33. “Humans are so much more complex than dogs, with such a broad range of feelings – though there were many times I missed the Yard, for the most part I was now living a far richer life, even though I often didn’t know what was going on.”

— William Bruce Cameron

34. “There are other dogs who need help. Rescue is like a river; it has to keep flowing. Otherwise even more dogs would die.”

— William Bruce Cameron

35. “We both knew what was happening now, and we were both grateful for it. Of all the wonderful things that humans do for dogs, this was one of the best – helping us when we are in the sort of pain that can only be eased with death.”

— William Bruce Cameron

36. “I wondered briefly if cats also came back after death, then dismissed the thought because as far as I had ever been able to tell, cats do not have a purpose.”

— William Bruce Cameron

37. “This was, I decided, my purpose as a dog, to comfort the boy whenever he needed me.”

— William Bruce Cameron

38. “What happened to the Ford?” “God, Gloria made me sell it. Supposedly, I had too much independence – that’s the new theory, that I ran off because of independence. Also, she wants me to see a shrink. She’s convinced that anyone who wouldn’t want to live with her has to be crazy.”

— William Bruce Cameron

39. “The mother is a Chihuahua. The father, we’re thinking Yorkie.” “Max, you’re a Chorkie!” CJ smiled down at me.”

— William Bruce Cameron

40. “I had fulfilled my purpose.”

— William Bruce Cameron

41. “For the next several minutes nothing much happened, biscuit wise.”

— William Bruce Cameron

42. “Maya was wearing a big fluffy outfit, so I knew we weren’t going to the park to play afterward, but that was okay because everyone seemed so glad at how well I’d done the trick. Mama even cried, she was so happy.”

— William Bruce Cameron

43. “Now what? Was I to be reborn over and over, forever? Could a dog have more than one purpose? How was that possible?”

— William Bruce Cameron

44. “Fast never saw us go.”

— William Bruce Cameron

45. “I could get up on that bed and curl up right next to my boy’s warmth. The boy loved me. I loved him. From the second we woke up until the moment we fell asleep, we were together.”

— William Bruce Cameron

46. “I tried to be comfortable in the rough, cold sand, pressed up against Tutu Nani’s leg. I could feel some of the fear leaving her as I lay there, so I didn’t try to change position. Having a dog nearby always makes things better.”

— William Bruce Cameron

47. “But people don’t always make sense. Dogs love them anyway.”

— William Bruce Cameron

48. “The sharp pain I felt when I thought about how much I missed the boy was just something to get used to: a dog’s job was to do what people wanted.”

— William Bruce Cameron

49. “I so wanted her to feel the happiness that I felt whenever we touched each other, but people are more complicated creatures than dogs. We always love them joyfully, but sometimes they’re mad at us, like when I chewed the sad shoes.”

— William Bruce Cameron

50. “The twist in his lower back that was aggravated by lifting objects, or sneezing, or moving, or not moving. No one had ever told him that growing old would hurt so much.”

— William Bruce Cameron