In my youth, it was my good luck to have a few good teachers, men and women, who came into my head and lit a match.

You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.

My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.

Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.

Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness--how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I've got!

We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.

I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.

If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?

No one dies of nausea, but it can seriously sap the will to live.

Read and write all the time. Never stop sending out your stuff. If you're constantly writing and sending stuff out, eventually someone will bite.

My own view is that being a vegetarian or vegan is not an end in itself, but a means towards reducing both human and animal suffering and leaving a habitable planet to future generations.

As the centuries unfold, millions of artists will live on the moon and paint the moon and Mars as we go out into the universe.

The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later.

I love watching keep-fit videos while munching chocolate chip cookies.

If married couples did not live together, happy marriages would be more frequent.

Our task is not to make societies safe for globalization, but to make the global system safe for decent societies.

I'm not just some butterfly for you to catch.

Discipline is never an end in itself, only a means to an end.

It's his show and I'm just trying to make him look good. If we were the same age there might be a little tension, but I'm on my way out... I am here to serve your every need, King James.