“I’d been traveling in Asia long enough to know that monkeys there are nothing like their trombone-playing, tambourine-banging cousins I’d seen on TV as a kid. Free-living Asian primates possess a characteristic I found shocking and confusing the first time I saw it: self-respect. If you make the mistake of holding the gaze of a street monkey in India, Nepal, or Malaysia, you’ll find you’re facing a belligerently intelligent creature whose expression says, with a Robert DeNiro–like scowl, “What the hell are you looking at? You wanna piece of me?” Forget about putting one of these guys in a little red vest.”

“I do not make mistakes, little monkey. A monkey I intended you to be. A monkey you are.”

“Ms.Mutou-I was told to write a last will, but…But even if I had possessions that were worth passing on, I have no family to give them to,So I wrote a letter to you, like always..I never could have imagined how shocked I’d been…When I first saw you at the prison.The truth is, I’d been looking for you.On that day that my brother died and I was left alone,Even you disappeared from the television screens…I looked for you…I looked and looked…But I couldn’t find you…I’d forgotten about it…So when I saw you here at the prison…I thought that perhaps…God truly did exist…Thanks to the Thursday that I spent with you,I knew for the first time how it felt to be happy.It was something I couldn’t obtain living by myself…It felt like I understood why people live their lives mingling with others…I won’t put a brave front…And tell you to forget about me, and live your life without letting your past hold you back…I want you to remember me.Just you-…That there was a little person like me…You told me once that even though there was someone you hated enough to want to kill, you were afraid to do it and stopped.I don’t think that you stopped because you were afraid, but rather that you were brave.If I had also done so…Perhaps I could have said to you the word that I could never say…Words…That I haven’t said once…Not since I was born…Probably…Ever since then…Ever since then…I’ve loved you…Live.Even if it’s only for a day…And please find a way…To be happier than anyone else…”

“Little red wagon, little red bike, I ain’t no monkey but I know what I like.”

“I was about 12 years old and I was sitting watching the television and it was some kind of talent show, you know, and on marches this monkey, this ape, in a pair of red-checked trousers with a little matching jacket holding a ukelele and it started jigging around playing it, and it was looking straight into the camera, straight at me, and I remember thinking, that's it, that'll be me, you know, that'll be me.”

“Everybody knows the thing about an infinite number of monkeys," Fenig said. "An infinite number of monkeys is put to work at an infinite number of typewriters and eventually one of them reproduces a great work of literature. In what language I don't know. But what about an infinite number of writers in an infinite number of cages? Would they make on monkey sound? One genuine chimp noise? Would they eventually swing by their toes from an infinite number of monkey bars? Would they shit monkey shit? It's academic, you say. You may be right.”