Mary Leakey quotes:

I'd rather be in a tent than in a house.

The first money I ever earned was for drawing stone tools.

I had never passed a single school exam, and clearly never would.

She stops, pauses, turns to the left to glance at some possible threat or irregularity, and then continues to the north. This motion, so intensely human, transcends time.

Theories come and go, but fundamental data always remains.

Theories come and go, but fundamental data always remain the same.

I go once a year to the Serengeti to see the wildebeest migrations because that means a lot to me, but I avoid Olduvai if I can because it is a ruin. It is most depressing.

There were details like clothing, hair styles and the fragile objects that hardly ever survive for the archaeologist-musical instruments, bows and arrows, and body ornaments depicted as they were worn... No amounts of stone and bone could yield the kinds of information that the paintings gave so freely

I quite liked having a baby - I think I won't put it more strongly than that. But I had no intention of allowing motherhood to disrupt my work as an archeologist.

Now this really is something to put on the mantelpiece.

I dug things up. I was curious. I liked to draw what I found.

I never felt interpretation was my job.

No amounts of stone and bone could yield the kinds of information that the paintings gave so freely.