It is hard to see how one could begin to develop a quantum-theoretical description of brain action when one might well have to regard the brain as "observing itself" all the time!

I was indeed very slow as a youngster.

There is a certain sense in which I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance. Some people take the view that the universe is simply there and it runs along-it's a bit as though it just sort of computes, and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing. I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe, I think that there is something much deeper about it, about its existence, which we have very little inkling of at the moment.

I'm pretty tenacious when it comes to problems.

It may well be there is something else going on in the brain that we don't have an inkling of at the moment.

Consciousness ... is the phenomenon whereby the universe's very existence is made known.

No doubt there are some who, when confronted with a line of mathematical symbols, however simply presented, can only see the face of a stern parent or teacher who tried to force into them a non-comprehending parrot-like apparent competence--a duty and a duty alone--and no hint of magic or beauty of the subject might be allowed to come through.