I really believed that I was on the right track, but that did not mean that I would necessarily reach my goal

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

The only way I could relax was when I was with my children.

I loved doing problems in school.

I was so obsessed by this problem that I was thinking about it all the time - when I woke up in the morning, when I went to sleep at night - and that went on for eight years.

I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days.

It's fine to work on any problem, so long as it generates interesting mathematics along the way - even if you don't solve it at the end of the day.