"I breathed. I began to wake up. I stretched and yawned in the soul I had forgotten, and the waking took months and years. I awoke a little more each spring and found rest for my weariness each enfolding winter. I shed more of my multicolored armor each fall. I was lucid in the warm of summer. I opened my eyes. I opened. I started noticing things. I noticed how alike the gorillas and I were. Sometimes I was filled with joy, and I wanted to shout, 'There are other real and gentle people among us! Human people are not alone! Look! Look!' Instead I stayed silent and I wrote about the gorillas--reams and reams--but ripped it all up and threw it away because it as all too private and I couldn't bear the thought of anyone seeing it."

Songs of the Gorilla Nation, Dawn Prince-Hughes