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.

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.

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.

[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.