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

There are times when one cannot accept facts for fear of shattering one's being. As I listened to Ian's news, all of Digit's life, since my first meeting with him as a playful little ball of black fluff ten years earlier, passed through my mind. From that moment on, I came to live within an insulated part of myself.

[My] excursions provided a unique opportunity for observing [the gorillas' behavior] in their natural habitat... Then, all too soon, the infants were demanded for their trip to the zoo. ... [H]appily the babies did not know they would never see their mountain home again

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.

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.'

None of the three great apes is considered ancestral to modern man, Homo sapiens, but they remain the only other type of extant primate with which human beings share such close physical characteristics. From them we may learn much concerning the behavior of our earliest primate prototypes, because behavior, unlike bones, teeth, or tools, does not fossilize.

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.