[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.

I shall never forget my first encounter with gorillas. Sound preceded sight. Odor preceded sound in the form of an overwhelming, musky-barnyard, humanlike scent. The air was suddenly rent by a high-pitched series of screams followed by the rhythmic rondo of sharp pok-pok chestbeats from a great silverbacked male obscured behind what seemed an impenetrable wall of vegetation.

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.

Active conservation [of gorillas] involves simply going out into the forest, on foot, day after day after day, attempting to capture poachers, killing-regretfully-poacher dogs, which spread rabies within the park, and cutting down traps.

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

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

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