One thing that's paramount in my life is that I am alone. I'm a loner. And yet I have many friends and I don't feel lonely. And I even like my own company. But when I'm alone, it's to read or write. I'm in my thoughts. Mostly I'm learning.

Society likes to file you away, put you in this or that category. And I never fit any category. Maybe that's why I was left out of a lot of things, or why my work was not really understood, because there was no precedent for it.

If I could relive my life, what I would do is work with scientists. But not one scientist, because they're locked into their little specializations. I'd go from scientist to scientist to scientist, like a bee goes from flower to flower.

We use up words as we use up images. We use up everything, and that's good, because it makes us grow.

I wish I didn't have daily problems to deal with, so that I could just concentrate on learning more, every single day.

I study what I work with. I studied all these different fields of science that I needed for my work. I studied how to mine a landfill and what to plant in it. It's fascinating because you learn a new field each time.

People always understand everything in retrospect.