The genome is a book that wrote itself, continually adding, deleting and amending over four billion years.

Simple determinism, whether of the genetic or environmental kind, is a depressing prospect for those with a fondness for free will.

Ecology, like genetics, is not about equilibrium states. It is about change, change and change. Nothing stays the same forever.

We consciously decide whether to consider people; we fall in love despite ourselves; we entirely fail to fall in love with people who fall in love with us. It is a mightily complicated business.

In a massive, long-term study of 17,000 civil servants, an almost unbelievable conclusion emerged: the status of a person's job was more likely to predict their likelihood of a heart attack than obesity, smoking or high blood pressure.

The body is merely an evolutionary vehicle for the gene

Every minute, every second, the pattern of genes being expressed in your brain changes, often in direct or indirect response to events outside the body. Genes are the mechanisms of experience.