What's cool is when you're able to give your audience imagination and you don't have to cage them in like animals.

I first became a vegetarian when I was nine in response to an argument made by a radical babysitter. My great change - which lasted a couple of weeks - was based on the very simple instinct that it's wrong to kill animals for food.

Maybe one day the world will change that we'll be in a luxurious position of being able to debate whether or not it's inherently wrong to eat animals but the question doesn't matter right now.

You look at a herd of cattle and well they all look the same... but they know. They all have an individual personality and those personalities change from day to day. They can have their grumpy days and their happy days and their serene days. But it's unpredictable. You can't be off in outer space when you're dealing with animals.

When fish experience something that would cause other animals physical pain they behave in ways suggestive of pain and the change in behaviour may last several hours.

I hope to bring much more attention to important issues and change for issues and practices that are harming animals.

Human beings are the only animal that thinks they change who they are simply by moving to a different place. Birds migrate but it's not quite the same thing.

I am interested in a lot of things - not just show business and my passion for animals. I try to keep current in what's going on in the world. I do mental exercises. I don't have any trouble memorizing lines because of the crossword puzzles I do every day to keep my mind a little limber. I don't sit and vegetate.

I always wanted to be a zookeeper when I was growing up and I've wound up a zookeeper! I've been working with the Los Angeles Zoo for 45 years! I'm the luckiest old broad on two feet because my life is divided absolutely in half - half animals and half show business. You can't ask for better than two things you love the most.

I stayed in show business to pay for my animal business.