Going to school and working for good marks, indeed working for very good marks, was a serious business.

It was good fortune to be a child during the Depression years and a youth during the war years.

A parent being called to the school because their child had misbehaved was as serious as a parent being called to the police station because their child had robbed a bank.

I learned quickly, as I tell my graduate students now, there are no answers in the back of the book when the equipment doesn't work or the measurements look strange.

They wanted me to play more sports because they were acutely sensitive to their children being one hundred percent American, and they believed that all Americans played sports and loved sports.

The experimenter dealing with nature faces an outside and often hard world. Natures' curriculum cannot be changed.

I read everything: fiction, history, science, mathematics, biography, travel.