Fischer, the great American chess champion, famously said, 'Chess is life.' I would say, 'Pi is life.'

I feel traveling certainly does broaden the mind. In my case certainly I feel more confident. It gives you a new perspective on the world.

Even the greatest mathematicians, the ones that we would put into our mythology of great mathematicians, had to do a great deal of leg work in order to get to the solution in the end.

I know from my own experience that there is much more to 'intelligence' than an IQ number. In fact, I hesitate to believe that any system could really reflect the complexity and uniqueness of one person's mind, or meaningfully describe the nature of his or her potential.

I can well imagine that certain writers, even writers that we'd consider today very great writers, may not necessarily have tested highly on IQ just because of their numerical skills, or maybe they may not be very good at memory, and are not particularly good at these kinds of tests.

From 'Embracing the Wide Sky', I went to the States, to Canada and to different parts of Europe as well. I gave interviews in several languages.

When I achieved the European record for reciting pi in 2004, this captured the imagination of Professor Simon Baron-Cohen in Cambridge and he finally diagnosed me with Asperger's that year.