Scientist

Although I am a public figure, I'm still a little shy. I don't think my own personality is important. I prefer to keep some small dosage of privacy.

I wish I had a talent for dropping things as well as taking on new ones. It gets to be quite a clutter after a while.

Everybody has to learn for the first time.

If we have isolated individuals able to inflict enormous harm, imagine what a single lunatic can do with a nuclear weapon. I think the whole base of civil society is at risk.

Life's a hobby.

We are all very individual. You have to find out what you can do best, and be self-conscious about that.

I got my Nobel Prize for my lab work.

If lifespan jumps by 30 or 40 years, that has enormous implications.

I'd like to put in a vote for the intrinsic fascination of science.

To have the recognition of your colleagues is great. The public attention is a mixed blessing.

I think we have to believe we are here for some purpose, and I know there are many cynics who will deny it, but they don't live as if they deny it.

When I was in high school, I became interested in cytochemistry: chemical analysis under the microscope, and trying to understand the composition of cells.

My ambitions were already very clearly fixed by the time I was 6 or 7.

I don't believe anybody can really grasp everything that's even in one textbook.

A Swedish newspaper reporter called and said, You've been awarded the Prize. I was quite sure it was a practical joke.

I was making a lot of momentous personal decisions. I was still very very young: when the prize was awarded, I was 33; the work I had done when I was 21.

Try hard to find out what you're good at and what your passions are, and where the two converge, and build your life around that.

By the time I was 12 or 13, I was studying biochemistry textbooks.

I started on the use of the Internet for scientific communication. Our research group was one of the very first to make really systematic use of it as a way of managing research projects.

I have many shortcomings. I feel very lucky to have been able to have what I've had.