Sy Montgomery > Quotes

“If you took the monsters' point of view, everything they did made perfect sense. The trick was learning to think like a monster.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“Go out into the world where your heart calls you. The blessings will come, I promise you that. I wish for you the insight to recognize the blessings as such, and sometimes it's hard. But you'll know it's a blessing if you are enriched and transformed by the experience. So be ready. There are great souls and teachers everywhere. It's your job to recognize them.”
― Sy Montgomery

“I never met a pig I didn't like. All pigs are intelligent, emotional, and sensitive souls. They all love company. They all crave contact and comfort. Pigs have a delightful sense of mischief; most of them seem to enjoy a good joke and appreciate music. And that is something you would certainly never suspect from your relationship with a pork chop.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood

“I’ve always harbored a fondness for monsters. Even as a child, I had rooted for Godzilla and King Kong instead of for the people trying to kill them. It had seemed to me that these monsters’ irritation was perfectly reasonable. Nobody likes to be awakened from slumber by a nuclear explosion, so it was no wonder to me Godzilla was crabby; as for King Kong, few men would blame him for his attraction to pretty Fay Wray. (Though her screaming would have eventually put off anyone less patient than a gorilla.) If you took the monsters’ point of view, everything they did made perfect sense. The trick was learning to think like a monster.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“The self,” Blackmore writes, “is just a fleeting impression that arises with each experience and fades away again. . . . There is no inner self,” she argues, “only multiple parallel processes that give rise to a benign inner delusion—a useful fiction.” She argues that consciousness itself is a fiction.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“A lion is a mammal like us; an octopus is put together completely differently, with three hearts, a brain that wraps around its throat, and a covering of slime instead of hair. Even their blood is a different color from ours; it’s blue, because copper, not iron, carries its oxygen.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“Here is an animal with venom like a snake, a beak like a parrot, and ink like an old-fashioned pen. It can weigh as much as a man and stretch as long as a car, yet it can pour its baggy, boneless body through an opening the size of an orange. It can change color and shape. It can taste with its skin. Most fascinating of all, I had read that octopuses are smart.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness

“I often wish I could go back in time and tell my young, anxious self that my dreams weren't in vain and my sorrows weren't permanent. I can't do that, but I can do something better. I can tell you that teachers are all around to help you; with four legs or two or eight or even none; some with internal skeletons, some without. All you have to do is recognize them as teachers and be ready to hear their truths.”
― Sy Montgomery, How To Be A Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals

“Knowing someone who belongs to another species can enlarge your soul in surprising ways.”
― Sy Montgomery, How To Be A Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals

“Love is the highest and best use of a life.”
― Sy Montgomery, How To Be A Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals

“Just about every animal,” Scott says—not just mammals and birds—“can learn, recognize individuals, and respond to empathy.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“Hormones and neurotransmitters, the chemicals associated with human desire, fear, love, joy, and sadness, “are highly conserved across taxa,” Jennifer said. This means that whether you’re a person or a monkey, a bird or a turtle, an octopus or a clam, the physiological changes that accompany our deepest-felt emotions appear to be the same. Even a brainless scallop’s little heart beats faster when the mollusk is approached by a predator, just like yours or mine would do were we to be accosted by a mugger.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“In her memoir of living among the Bushmen, The Old Way: A Story of the First People, my friend Liz lovingly invokes an image first coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins: “You are standing beside your mother, holding her hand. She is holding her mother’s hand, who is holding her mother’s hand. . . . ” Eventually the line stretches three hundred miles long and goes back five million years, and the clasping hand of the ancestor looks like that of a chimpanzee.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“I am still learning how to be a good creature. Though I try earnestly, I often fail. But I am having a great life trying...”
― Sy Montgomery, How To Be A Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals

“But what is the soul? Some say it is the self, the “I” that inhabits the body; without the soul, the body is like a lightbulb with no electricity. But it is more than the engine of life, say others; it is what gives life meaning and purpose. Soul is the fingerprint of God.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“Humans have always exalted dreams. Pindar of Thebes, the Greek lyric poet, suggested that the soul is more active while dreaming than while awake. He believed that during a dream, the awakened soul may see the future, “an award of joy or sorrow drawing near.” So it’s no wonder that humans were quick to reserve dreams for people alone; researchers for many years claimed dreams were a property of “higher” minds. But any pet owner who has heard her dog woof or seen his cat twitch during sleep knows that is not true. MIT researchers now know not only that rats dream, but what they dream about. Neurons in the brain fire in distinctive patterns while a rat in a maze performs particular tasks. The researchers repeatedly saw the exact same patterns reproduced while the rats slept—so clearly that they could tell what point in the maze the rat was dreaming about, and whether the animal was running or walking in the dream. The rats’ dreams took place in an area of the brain known to be involved with memory, further supporting a notion that one function of dreams is to help an animal remember what it has learned.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“She’s looking right at you,” Scott says. As I hold her glittering gaze, I instinctively reach to touch her head. “As supple as leather, as tough as steel, as cold as night,” Hugo wrote of the octopus’s flesh; but to my surprise, her head is silky and softer than custard. Her skin is flecked with ruby and silver, a night sky reflected on the wine-dark sea. As I stroke her with my fingertips, her skin goes white beneath my touch. White is the color of a relaxed octopus; in cuttlefish, close relatives of octopus, females turn white when they encounter a fellow female, someone whom they need not fight or flee.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“Volumes of history written in the ancient alphabet of G and C, A and T.”
― Sy Montgomery, Search for the Golden Moon Bear: Science and Adventure in Pursuit of a New Species

“The idea of universal consciousness suffuses both Western and Eastern thought and philosophy, from the “collective unconscious” of psychologist Carl Jung, to unified field theory, to the investigations of the Institute of Noetic Sciences founded by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell in 1973. Though some of the Methodist ministers of my youth might be appalled, I feel blessed by the thought of sharing with an octopus what one website (loveandabove.com) calls “an infinite, eternal ocean of intelligent energy.” Who would know more about the infinite, eternal ocean than an octopus? And what could be more deeply calming than being cradled in its arms, surrounded by the water from which life itself arose? As Wilson and I pet Kali’s soft head on this summer afternoon, I think of Paul the Apostle’s letter to the Philippians about the power of the “peace that passeth understanding . . .”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“There is another important difference as well. Human eyes have three visual pigments, allowing us to see color. Octopuses have only one—which would make these masters of camouflage, commanding a glittering rainbow of colors, technically color-blind. How, then, does the octopus decide what colors to turn? New evidence suggests cephalopods might be able to see with their skin.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“In her memoir of living among the Bushmen, The Old Way: A Story of the First People, my friend Liz lovingly invokes an image first coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins: “You are standing beside your mother, holding her hand. She is holding her mother’s hand, who is holding her mother’s hand. . . . ” Eventually the line stretches three hundred miles long and goes back five million years, and the clasping hand of the ancestor looks like that of a chimpanzee. I loved picturing one of Octavia’s arms stretching out to meet one of her mother’s arms, and one of her mother’s mother’s arms, and her mother’s mother’s mother’s. . . . Suckered, elastic arms, reaching back through time: an octopus chorus line stretching not just hundreds, but many thousands of miles long. Back past the Cenozoic, the time when our ancestors descended from the trees; back past the Mesozoic, when dinosaurs ruled the land; back past the Permian and the rise of the ancestors of the mammals; back, past the Carboniferous’s coal-forming swamp forests; back past the Devonian, when amphibians emerged from the water; back past the Silurian, when plants first took root on land—all the way to the Ordovician, to a time before the advent of wings or knees or lungs, before the fishes had bony jaws, before blood pumped from a multichambered heart. More than 500 million years ago, the tides would have been stronger, the days shorter, the year longer, and the air too high in carbon dioxide for mammals or birds to breathe. All the earth’s continents huddled in the Southern Hemisphere. And yet still, the arm of Octavia’s ancestor, sensitive, suckered, and supple, would have been recognizable as one of an octopus.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“But I am also aware that in animals, as well as people, there is an inborn temperament, a way of seeing the world, that interacts with the environment, and that shapes personality. There’s nobody else doing what I’m doing. It may be weird, but it’s unique.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“Just about every animal,” Scott says—not just mammals and birds—“can learn, recognize individuals, and respond to empathy.” Once you find the right way to work with an animal, be it an octopus or an anaconda, together, you can accomplish what even Saint Francis might have considered a miracle.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“Octopus slime is sort of a cross between drool and snot. But in a nice way. And it’s very useful. It helps to be slippery if you’re squeezing your body in and out of tight places. Slime keeps the octopus moist if it wants to emerge from the water, which some species of octopus do with surprisingly frequency in the wild.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“reverie. To share such a moment of deep tranquility with another being, especially one as different from us as the octopus, is a humbling privilege.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“...one of the most heartbreaking conditions of life on Earth is that most of the animals we love... die so long before we do.”
― Sy Montgomery, How To Be A Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals

“Isn’t this what we want to know about those whom we care about? What is it like, we wonder at each meeting, in shared meals and secrets and silences, with each touch and glance, to be you?”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“This is the gift great souls leave us when they die. They enlarge our hearts. They leave us a greater capacity for love.”
― Sy Montgomery, How To Be A Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals

“Most animals on this planet live in the ocean. And most of them are invertebrates.”
― Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

“A far worse mistake than misreading an animal's emotions is to assume the animal hasn't any emotions at all.”
― Sy Montgomery, How To Be A Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals