What I actually wanted to do with my life is make a difference to the world. That led me into science very quickly.

Wikipedia was a big help for science, especially science communication, and it shows no sign of diminishing in importance.

There is no difference between saving lives and extending lives, because in both cases we are giving people the chance of more life.

Public enthusiasm for new advances is a key ingredient in influencing policy-makers to stimulate follow-up work with suitable funding, and it can be achieved far faster now that interested non-specialists can explore new research autonomously and can also be appealed to directly by scientists.

I dont often meet people who want to suffer cardiovascular disease or whatever, and we get those things as a result of the lifelong accumulation of various types of molecular and cellular damage.

Most scientists will get serious media exposure about twice in their entire career. And they'll get that because they've actually done an experiment that was interesting.

What I'm after is not living to 1,000. I'm after letting people avoid death for as long as they want to.