And what I wanted to do was, I wanted to explore problems and areas where we didn't have answers. In fact, where we didn't even know the right questions to ask.

There have been some friendships lost over this. That's the most difficult for me. I find it very uncomfortable to know that I was at one time close friends with someone, and because of jealousies and misunderstandings and so on, these friendships have dissolved.

My real father died when I was two years old, so I never knew him. He was a barber in Chicago.

In our case, finding a Lucy is unique. No one will ever find another Lucy. You can't order one from a biological supply house. It's a unique discovery, a unique specimen.

I was aware of it, but I grew up in a very a-religious family. My mother never went to church, she never had any religious training or background. It was never a part of our social interaction.

When I realized, in 1978, that Lucy did represent a new species of human ancestor, and that I had an opportunity to name this new species, I realized this was a revolutionary step in understanding human origins.

I was very intellectually oriented, very early on.

One has to devote oneself to a particular pursuit. To be successful at anything, you have to make a total commitment to it.

But it really wasn't until three to four years later, when we had an opportunity in the lab to make very detailed observations, and comparisons with other fossil discoveries, that we realized she was a new species of human ancestor.

And what I wanted to do was, I wanted to explore problems and areas where we didn't have answers. In fact, where we didn't even know the right questions to ask.

As an undergraduate, I had an opportunity to go on a number of archeological digs. So I had experience excavating, digging up remains of ancient Indian villages in the Midwest and in the Southwest.

When the first fossils began to be found in eastern Africa, in the late 1950s, I thought, what a wonderful marriage this was, biology and anthropology. I was around 16 years old when I made this particular choice of academic pursuit.

Most achievers I know are people who have made a strong and deep dedication to pursuing a particular goal. That dedication took a tremendous amount of effort.

I realized immediately that this was a terribly important discovery, but I didn't realize how important it would be until we had spent a lot of time in the laboratory studying it.

Normally, we are happy to find a fragment of jaw, a few isolated teeth, a bit of an arm, a bit of a skull. But to find associated body parts is extremely rare.

I think that many of my ideas are correct, but I'll bet you, before my death other discoveries will be made that will prompt me to alter various ideas I have about human evolution.

But what really excited me was the idea that humans had a tremendous pre-history that went back millions of years. I wanted to go to Africa to find some of these creatures.

Lucy brought with her an image of our human ancestors that you don't get when you find a jaw or an arm bone or a leg bone. Here was 40 percent of a single skeleton.

Scientists are very afraid of being proven wrong.

This was the most important discovery I had ever made in my life. It was a discovery which has irrevocably changed my whole life's direction. It immediately elevated me to the status of one of the world's leading anthropologists.

Commitment, belief and positive attitude are all important if you're going to be a success, whether you're in sports, in business or, as in my case, anthropology.

Evolution explains our biological evolution, but human beings are very unique creatures. As the Dobzhansky said, all animals are unique; humans are the uniquest. And that uniqueness of being human, language, art, culture, our dependency on culture for survival, comes from the combination of traditional biological evolution.

I don't think we interbred with the Neanderthals at all. There are some people who think that there was some level of interbreeding. I think that we look so biologically different, that we looked and we acted so different, and we culturally were so different that we would not have had interbreeding between two species.

We are placed in the genus of Homo, which is Latin for man - Homo sapiens: supposedly wise men. I sometimes think - wonder - whether we really are wise men.

What makes us human depends on what place on our evolutionary path we're talking about. If you go back six million years ago, what makes us human is that we were walking upright. That's all. If you go to 2.6 million years ago, it's the fact that we're designing and making stone tools.

What's changed is we now have good anatomical, geological, archaeological evidence that Neanderthals are not our ancestors. When I wrote 'Lucy,' I considered Neanderthals ancestors of modern humans. We have gone back twice the age of Lucy, six million years. And we see that upright bipedal walking goes back that far in time.

Where we are going as a species is a big question. Human evolution certainly hasn't stopped. Every time individuals produce a new zygote, there's a reshuffling and recombination of genes. And we don't know where all of that is going to take us.

One has to take initiative in life to achieve what he or she wants.

People don't want to be plagued by not knowing-they want answers.

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

I wish I knew at 14 not to put much thought into what other people my age said to me, cause we were all looking for the answers. So I wish I knew that other people really don't know any more than you do!

Einstein was a man who could ask immensely simple questions. And what his work showed is that when the answers are simple too, then you can hear God thinking.

The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.

To play a good guy is nice because in a way, he is so open for answers.

Some people think technology has the answers.

Music is more emotional than prose, more revolutionary than poetry. I'm not saying I've got the answers, just a of questions that I don't hear other artists asking.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.

Real answers need to be found in dialogue and interaction and, yes, our shared human condition. This means being open to one another instead of simply fighting to maintain a prescribed position.

This story, I predict, will grow to be worse than Watergate. The American people need to have the answers.

By the time the people asking the questions are ready for the answers, the people doing the work have lost track of the questions.

I was asking Charlie the most important questions, and you heard the answers.

There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.

You need to make a commitment, and once you make it, then life will give you some answers.

I think it does suggest that the American people really do want to listen to somebody who actually has some solutions, some answers, and gives them some hope.

We don't know all the answers. If we knew all the answers we'd be bored, wouldn't we? We keep looking, searching, trying to get more knowledge.

That's where I began to ask questions that maybe don't have one specific answer. And the more people you get answers from, the richer the environment becomes.

One of the things that is wrong with religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with answers which are not really answers at all.

There is no such thing as an unreasonable question, or a silly question, or a frivolous question, or a waste-of-time question. It's your life, and you've got to get these answers.