I had this wonderful, supportive mother who didn't get mad because of all the earth mucking up my bed. She just said they'd die - they needed the earth.

I got to Africa. I got the opportunity to go and learn, not about any animal, but chimpanzees. I was living in my dream world, the forest in Gombe National Park in Tanzania. It was Tanganyika when I began.

It has actually been suggested that warfare may have been the principle evolutionary pressure that created the huge gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relatives, the anthropoid apes. Whole groups of hominids with inferior brains could not win wars and were therefore exterminated.

I am obstinate and I will not give in.

I think the best evenings are when we have messages, things that make us think, but we can also laugh and enjoy each other's company.

I think I'd like to be remembered as someone who really helped people to have a little humility and realize that we are part of the animal kingdom not separated from it.

Here we are, arguably the most intelligent being that's ever walked planet Earth, with this extraordinary brain ... and yet we're destroying the only home we have.