I'm always pushing for human responsibility. Given that chimpanzees and many other animals are sentient and sapient then we should treat them with respect.

Steve Irwin did wonderful conservation work but I was uncomfortable about some of his stunts. Even if animals aren't aware that you are not treating them with respect the viewers are.

So basically my view is I don't want to support the exploitation of animals and within reason I will do what I can to avoid it but it's not like it's a religion for me. It's not like I consider I'm polluted if somehow some bit of milk or cheese or something passes my lips.

I have a great relationship with animals and with children. I get to their level. I try to see the way a child looks at the world it's hugely different.

First and foremost I am a commercial writer and I hope to entertain people. But having said that I'm in love with the relationship between humans and dogs and the more I learned about what our military working dogs are doing I wanted to at least share with people what an important role these animals have in all our lives.

Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then only a few feet away in the cookbook section just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?

The behavior of men to the lower animals and their behavior to each other bear a constant relationship.

There will always be vain obsessive people who want to own rare and extraordinary things whatever the cost there will always be people for whom owning beautiful dangerous animals brings a sense of power and magic.

We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice.

The musician is perhaps the most modest of animals but he is also the proudest. It is he who invented the sublime art of ruining poetry.