Aggression in bears can be and often is a stepping stone to friendship. Friendship and alliances frequently develop by repeated interactions, with initial aggression that lessens over time.

— Benjamin Kilham

All the authoritative books on bears seem to agree on one thing: if you're close enough to a bear to cause it to change its activity pattern, you're too close, and in possible danger.

— Dennis R. Blanchard

Always respect Mother Nature. Especially when she weighs 400 pounds and is guarding her baby.

— James Rollins

And now, for something completely the same:Wasted time and wasted breath, 's what I'll make, until my death. Helping people'd be as good, but I wouldn't, if I could. For the few that help deserve, have no need, or not the nerve, help from strangers to accept, plus from mine a few have wept. Wept from joy, or from despair, or just from my vengeful stare. Ways I have, to look at stupid, make them see I am not Cupid. Make them see they are in error, for of truth I am a bearer. Most decide I'm just a bear, mauling at them, - like I care.

— Will Advise

Animals had returned to what was left of the forest...clusters of orange butterflies exploded off the blackish purple piles of bear sign and winked and fluttered magically like leaves without trees. More bears than people traveled the muddy road, leaving tracks straight up and down the middle of it...

— Denis Johnson

Are you scared of going in to see the refried [the council]?” asked a gray female pup. “Are you CAG mag [crazy]? If a bear was his Milk Giver, you think he’s scared of the refried?

— Kathryn Lasky

A teddy bear will give you love. A grizzly bear will give you a mauling. Some bears aren't just the same.

— Anthony T.Hincks

Bears find themselves at the spot where two deep-seated but contradictory human impulses collide: the desire to feel protected from unforeseeable danger and the longing for unspoiled nature.

— Bernd Brunner

Bears, it turns out, are a lot like humans. They form alliances with strangers, they make calculations about relative costs and benefits, they lay down rules and punish those who break them. They trade based on a clear system of reciprocity. Furthermore, they communicate using equal parts emotion, intention, and dependence on context-a combination that is essential for communication between strangers and in fact forms the basis for language.

— Benjamin Kilham

♫ Climbed that roost, alighted right there. Made mush of his head for the onlooker bears. A two-pronged her prize, a meat most rare. Do-gooders will pay. Do-gooders will fear. ♫

— Darrell Drake