Gregory Colbert Quotations

Ever since my house burned down, I see the moon more clearly.

The works themselves can't be separate from the architecture or the music or the films. When you walk into the building, you're literally inside the work of art itself.

Anteater -- who could have ever thought that such an animal could be so expressive? It's all in their eyes. There are so many great storytellers other than humans.

This building has legs and it wants to have conversations in different cultural contexts and cities. This is almost like a pirate ship that's arrived ashore.

I spent all my time at school in the library. Bad teachers can teach you to learn on your own.

My imagination has always been inspired by nature’s vision

Letter 1 To the princess of the elephants, I disappeared exactly one year ago. On that day I received a letter. It called me back to the place where my life with the elephants began Please forgive me, for the silence between us has been unbroken for one year. I will never be more of myself than in these letters. They are my maps of the bird path, and they are all that I know to be true.

Every culture from the Egyptians to the Mayans to the American Indians to the Bedouins created bestiaries that enabled them to express their relationship with nature. Ashes and Snow is a 21st-century bestiary filled with species from around the world. Nature’s orchestra includes not just Homo sapiens but elephants, whales, manatees, eagles, cheetahs, orangutans, and many others.

If you look at Paleolithic cave paintings, you see how people were depicted inside nature, not outside it. It was a kind of dream time. That's what I'm exploring.

The stars you see at night are the unblinking eyes of sleeping elephants, who sleep with one eye open to best keep watch over us.

Feather to fire,fire to blood Blood to bone,bone to marrow Marrow to ashes,ashes to snow

I have invented nothing. I have simply documented a magical alchemy that I want to share.

When I started Ashes and Snow in 1992, I set out to explore the relationship between man and animals from the inside out. In discovering the shared language and poetic sensibilities of all animals, I am working towards restoring the common ground that once existed when people lived in harmony with animals.

We need to renegotiate our contract with nature. Ecology is a unifying force that can diminish intolerance and expand our empathy towards others—both human and animal.

Is it only humans that look up with wonder at the stars and the vastness of the universe?

The whales do not sing because they have an answer, they sing because they have a song.