All life is related. And it enables us to construct with confidence the complex tree that represents the history of life

The climate suits me, and London has the greatest serious music that you can hear any day of the week in the world - you think it's going to be Vienna or Paris or somewhere, but if you go to Vienna or Paris and say, 'Let's hear some good music', there isn't any.

I think the most alarming animals I have encountered are really poisonous snakes.

People must feel that the natural world is important and valuable and beautiful and wonderful and an amazement and a pleasure.

The most extraordinary thing about trying to piece together the missing links in the evolutionary story is that when you do find a missing link and put it in the story, you suddenly need all these other missing links to connect to the new discovery. The gaps and questions actually increase - it's extraordinary.

I'm luckier than my grandfather, who didn't move more than five miles from the village in which he was born.

What I am interested in with birds, just as I am with spiders or monkeys, is what they do and why they do it.