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.

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.

I don't like having my space invaded.

I'm a big advocate of a work-for-pay setup rather than an allowance that isn't attached to chores - it's a great way to impart the value of money to your children.

Everything you listen to when you are 17 should be embarrassing, otherwise you are way too cool.

A man of character in peace is a man of courage in war.

If you make a mistake, people are going to know about it really fast - and I was making a ton of them when I was a kid.

The dog commends himself to our favor by affording play to our propensity for mastery.

I think my favorite song from another artist would have to be 'Superstition' by Stevie Wonder.

We believed it was better to pay as you go than it was to pay your bills by borrowing and laying up debts for another day. To pay as you go, that policy is a safer business policy and a saner business policy, and we thought it was a saner national policy.

I would like to think that I'm more different from my character than I am.

Donald Trump tests the limits of campaign speech. He makes false statements and refuses to correct them. He attacks other religions and ethnic groups, inflaming domestic tension and foreign terrorist rage.

I was born with confidence in myself and who I am. Even when I was a little kid, I felt that, and I carried it all through my years. I'm 26 now, and I'm still that person. I think every woman needs to have that self-love.

It's barely OK for me to be dressed up as a black guy. But part of me kind of enjoys provoking people.

When we got knocked out against Porto in the Champions League, I only slept two hours that night. I was not a nice person to be with after that match. I was struggling to get the result out of my system.

It's frightening, the way life speeds up. When you're at school, time can't go fast enough.

A man could spend the rest of his life trying to remember what he shouldn't have said.

The First Amendment applies to rogues and scoundrels. You dont lose your First Amendment rights because of a sleazy personality or even for having committed a crime. Felons in jail are protected by the First Amendment.

I try to transition my energy into just having fun.

We all need to focus on our writing. Because the millions of readers out there don't care about your blog.

I enjoy being out; I like being around people, but at a certain point in time, I kind of run out of charming, and I'm ready to go home, and I'm very comfortable alone.

The first book that really knocked me out was the 'Brothers Karamazov.' I read it when I was a senior in high school.

Even though most people won't be directly involved with programming, everyone is affected by computers, so an educated person should have a good understanding of how computer hardware, software, and networks operate.