“Is there anything sweeter than the touch of another as she pulls a dead bug from your fur?”

“Memories are precious ... they help tell us who we are.”

“I like colorful tales with black beginnings and stormy middles and cloudless blue-sky endings. But any story will do.”

“Growing up gorilla is just like any other kind of growing up. You make mistakes. You play. You learn. You do it all over again.”

“My family tree spreads wide as well. I am a great ape, and you are a great ape, and so are chimpanzees and orangutans and bonobos, all of us distant and distrustful cousins.I know this is troubling...”

“My life is flashing lights and pointing fingers and uninvited visitors. Inches away, humans flatten their little hands against the wall of glass that separates us.The glass says you are this and we...”

“There are two types of seeds in the mind: those that create anger, fear, frustration, jealousy, hatred and those that create love, compassion, equanimity and joy. Spirituality is germination and sp...”

“My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.These, by contrast, are...”

“If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.”

“I just realized that sleep sometimes is the only precious wage for the hard working man.”

“Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.”

“So do not waste my time. It is the most precious thing I have, time. It is the most precious thing any of us have.”

“Doesnt that feel safe: a whole world protected by $1 safety-switches.”

“How the hell do I know? It just hurts me to think about it....And its not because you're a great lay. Though you are. But I've had great lays before, and I didn't get torn up. You should have known...”

“Youth is no protection; in the end, life scars us all.”