You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient.

I recently went to my staircase at Clare College, Cambridge and there were women there! There have been a lot of convincing studies recently about the loss of productivity in the Western male. It may be that entertainment culture now is so engaging that it keeps people satisfied. We didn't have that. Science was much more fun than listening to the radio. When you are 16 or 17 and in that inherently semi-lonely period when you are deciding whether to be an intellectual, many now don't bother.

DNA was my only gold rush. I regarded DNA as worth a gold rush.

No good model ever accounted for all the facts, since some data was bound to be misleading if not plain wrong.

Ever since we achieved a breakthrough in the area of recombinant DNA in 1973, left-wing nuts and environmental kooks have been screaming that we will create some kind of Frankenstein bug or Andromeda Strain that will destroy us all.

If we don't play God, who will?

One of the greatest gifts science has brought to the world is continuing elimination of the supernatural.