I think the major good idea in Unix was its clean and simple interface: open, close, read, and write.

For most of that time, I've also been a keen gardener, but for many years I failed to make the connection between gardening and science.

I still have a full-time day job, which is why it took me five years to write An Ear to the Ground, and why I won't have another book finished by next week.

I view Linux as something that's not Microsoft - a backlash against Microsoft, no more and no less.

I don't think there are many people up in research who have strong ideas about things that they haven't really had experience with.

I have to keep up with the scientific literature as part of my job, but increasingly I found myself reading things that weren't really relevant to my academic work, but were relevant to gardening.

In fact, we started off with two or three different shells and the shell had life of its own.