Scientist

Just living longer and being sick is the worst. But the idea that you could have fewer diseases, and just have a healthy life and then turn out the lights, that's a good vision to have. And I think what we know about some of these pathways suggests that might be possible.

We are trying to find drugs, small molecules, that people could take to make them disease-resistant, more youthful and healthy. Eventually we will find them.

If I were a worm, I would rather be the long-lived mutant than the normal worm, that's for sure.

I was a little truth seeker as a child. I wanted more than anything to understand myself and also other people.

The hope is that if we can increase youthfulness, we can postpone age-related diseases.

I eat some fruit every day, but not too much and almost no processed food. I stay away from sweets, except 80 per cent chocolate.

The idea that ageing was subject to control was completely unexpected.

Age is the biggest risk factor for many diseases. You're 100 times more likely to get a tumor at age 65 than age 35. It makes a huge difference. It gives a whole new meaning to preventive medicine.

You would think that UV just causes mutations, but it doesn't; you need a gene to be active for it.

Humans live a lot longer than dogs, and we don't suffer any penalty that I can see. We're superior in almost every way - they can smell better. But really, they can't drive cars, they can't do half the things we can. I don't understand why you can't live longer and be really fit.

Age is the single largest risk factor for an enormous number of diseases. So if you can essentially postpone aging, then you can have beneficial effects on a whole wide range of disease.

If the aging process is controlled in a similar way in worms and humans, then we can use what we learn about worms to speed our study of higher organisms.

It's like, say, if you were a dog. You notice that you're getting old, and you look at your human and you think, 'Why isn't this human getting old?'... But now we're the human looking out and imagining a different human.

The public is absolutely fascinated by aging. They don't want to get old. And you can see - read Shakespeare. Read the sonnets. They're all about aging.

There are lots of different strategies that an animal can use to survive. What a worm does is try to convert food into worms as soon as possible. In three days a single worm produces 300 progeny. So why put your resources into developing if you can make a brand-new worm in no time at all?

Life's too short to not be around nice people.

It was like stepping on to an escalator; I could do anything. I was just made for science.

Generally, older people in their fifties, sixties, and seventies are running most countries and are CEOs of corporations. Which isn't to say there aren't entrepreneurs, but if the young were better in every respect, there'd be no reason for the old. Our life span reflects our particular life strategy.

Carbohydrates, and especially refined ones like sugar, make you produce lots of extra insulin. I've been keeping my intake really low ever since I discovered this. I've cut out all starch such as potatoes, noodles, rice, bread and pasta.

In principle, if you understood the mechanisms of keeping things repaired, you could keep things going indefinitely.