Gorillas are almost altruistic in nature. There's very little if any 'me-itis.' When I get back to civilization I'm always appalled by 'me, me, me.'

When you realize the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future.

I feel more comfortable with gorillas than people. I can anticipate what a gorilla's going to do, and they're purely motivated.

I have no friends. The more you learn about the dignity of the gorilla, the more you want to avoid people.

The man who kills the animals today is the man who kills the people who get in his way tomorrow.

I had this great urge... I had it the day I was born. Some may call it destiny. My parents and friends called it dismaying.

One of the basic steps in saving a threatened species is to learn more about it: its diet, its mating and reproductive processes, its range patterns, its social behavior.

It was their individuality combined with the shyness of their behavior that remained the most captivating impression of this first encounter with the greatest of the great apes.

[About gorillas] You take these fine, regal animals. How many (human) fathers have the same sense of paternity? How many human mothers are more caring? The family structure is unbelievably strong.

The extraordinary gentleness of the adult male with his young dispels all the King Kong mythology.

I had a wonderful contact, especially with Uncle Bert who was an angel and led the whole group over to my side of a steep ravine I could not cross to get over to them

Music was a balm for any weary soul. It could either lift a person out of the doldrums or comfort him if there was no other solace to be had.

What await you

Creativity is like the light, the reason we see the light because the “switch” is on and the connection is made

Some prisons don't require bars to keep people locked inside. All it takes is their perception that they belong there.

Education is what is left after you've forgotten everything you've learned.

Reviewers do not read books with much care . . . their profession is more given to stupidity and malice and literary ignorance even than the profession of novelist.

There is all of the difference in the world between paying and being paid.

I'm irrational about all things creative and I'm always late!

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

I hate to say it, but killing is our way. We began America with genocide, then built it with slaves. The shootings will continue. It's who we are.