Caroline Paul quotes:

I think as humans we do want to control our relationships, and you can't. It's probably better that you can't. That wouldn't be a real relationship, and we'd never learn and grow.

Most people go to the office and sit at a desk. When firefighters go to the office, we might birth a baby in the morning, save a drowning surfer in the afternoon, and run into a fire at night. What could be more interesting than that?

Its hard in the firehouse to avoid the dessert thing. At 3 in the morning after some emergency, I have been known to eat an ice cream sandwich.

Fire taps something ancient and vital in each of us, something both snarling and reverential.

If there's a fire, I want to be there. Maybe because in being so close to death, I think I understand what it means to be truly alive.

Cats are the slipperiest of domestic animals. Thousands of years of genetic coding has taught them to melt into azaleas, lie motionless behind garden gnomes, glide along fence tops, and slink under benches.

In a fire, you have to be thoughtful; you have to have a certain kind of intuitive smarts that the veterans have. I'm not there yet, despite the Stanford degree.

I don't think that we really know our animals. We think we do because we're humans, and we think we can control things like that. We don't know anybody that we love. It could be a girlfriend or a cat. I think we just have to be at peace with that.

I should really be lifting only five days. I'm sort of obsessed, and I end up going in six, sometimes seven, and that's not good. Something that I preach but don't practice - moderation.

Wasn't growing catnip in one's yard the kitty equivalent of giving candy to children?