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

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

My life is constant revision but it's not revision, a lot of it is for the first time.

We very quickly forget about the wonderful things we've got. People lose their excitement because there's too much. Basically we're experiencing nothing, because everything is available to us.

My wife could turn to me and she may say, 'Why do you love me?' And I can with all honesty look her in the eye and say, 'Because our pheromones matched our olfactory receptors.'

If the Royal Variety Show was put in a matter transportation machine with the Royal Institution Christmas lectures, this is what you'd get.

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.