I have spent a reasonable percentage of my life in libraries - I like the hush.

I have a theory that evolutionary biologists are more vain than particle physicists.

They gave 12 monkeys a typewriter for a week, and after a week, they only used it as a bathroom.

Science is very cross-generational; you're not just aiming it at twentysomethings, or eightysomethings. Every town's got a really broad selection of people and age groups interested in science.

I don't have any hobbies because my working job is my hobby. What I do is I spend my whole time looking through telescopes and having brain scans and buying books about various different ideas and I just sit around, that's my life.

Once you start looking at the world rationally, it becomes much more exciting.

I am not man or beast; I am bibliosexual, and a seedy bibliosexual who haunts the streets, laden with carrier bags held by blistered fingers, stooping under the weight of the rucksack that has brought on sciatica and a Dickensian demeanour.