I loved doing problems in school.

I tried to fit it in with some previous broad conceptual understanding of some part of mathematics that would clarify the particular problem I was thinking about.

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.

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

There are proofs that date back to the Greeks that are still valid today.

Fermat said he had a proof.

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