It is notoriously difficult to define the word living.

My own prejudices are exactly the opposite of the functionalists': "If you want to understand function, study structure".

I think she [Rosalind Franklin] was a good experimentalist but certainly not of the first rank. She was simply not in the same class as Eigen or Bragg or Pauling, nor was she as good as Dorothy Hodgkin. She did not even select DNA to study. It was given to her. Her theoretical crystallography was very average.

Protein synthesis is a central problem for the whole of biology, and that it is in all probability closely related to gene action.

Evolution is cleverer than you are.

Avoid the temptation to work so hard that there is no time left for serious thinking.

If the code does indeed have some logical foundation then it is legitimate to consider all the evidence, both good and bad, in any attempt to deduce it.