Some mathematics problems look simple, and you try them for a year or so, and then you try them for a hundred years, and it turns out that they're extremely hard to solve. There's no reason why these problems shouldn't be easy, and yet they turn out to be extremely intricate. Fermat's Last Theorem is the most beautiful example of this.

Pure mathematicians just love to try unsolved problems - they love a challenge.

Mathematics... is a bit like discovering oil. ... But mathematics has one great advantage over oil, in that no one has yet ... found a way that you can keep using the same oil forever.

But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library.

Then when I reached college, I realized that many people had thought about the problem during the 18th and 19th centuries and so I studied those methods.

The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself.

That particular odyssey is now over. My mind is now at rest.