My heroes were never scientists. They were Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood, you know, good writers.

The brain is the last and grandest biological frontier, the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe. It contains hundreds of billions of cells interlinked through trillions of connections. The brain boggles the mind.

If we don't play God, who will?

I wanted to see if I could write a good book.

I turned against the left wing because they don't like genetics, because genetics implies that sometimes in life we fail because we have bad genes. They want all failure in life to be due to the evil system.

Polls consistently show that the majority of Americans favour research using embryonic stem cells and yet politicians continue to pander to the outspoken religious minority that is hampering efforts to develop this potentially valuable technology.

Science seldom proceeds in the straightforward logical manner imagined by outsiders. Instead, its steps forward (and sometimes backward) are often very human events in which personalities and cultural traditions play major roles.