I've got different ideas of complete happiness. But one is being by myself out in a forest, completely happy. Another is walking with a dog in some nice place. And three is sitting around preferably a fire, but not necessarily, and drinking red wine with friends and telling stories.

It was both fascinating and appalling to learn that chimpanzees were capable of hostile and territorial behavior that was not unlike certain forms of primitive human warfare.

And always I have this feeling--which may not be true at all--that I am being used as a messenger.

....I understood why those who had lived through war or economic disasters, and who had built for themselves a good life and a high standard of living, were rightly proud to be able to provide for their children those things which they themselves had not had. And why their children, inevitably, took those things for granted. It meant that new values and new expectations had crept into our societies along with new standards of living. Hence the materialistic and often greedy and selfish lifestyle of so many young people in the Western world, especially in the United States.

The problem of the chimps is that they can only sit and look. They can't discuss what they feel. All that feeling is trapped within each one.

The refugees flee to protect their families from violence; the Europeans, on the other hand, fear for their jobs that they need to feed their families.

Chimps are far too much human to be my favorite animal.