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

Ambition, idly vain; revenge and malice swell her train.

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.

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

I was indeed very slow as a youngster.

I imagine that whenever the mind perceives a mathematical idea, it makes contact with Plato's world of mathematical concepts... When mathematicians communicate, this is made possible by each one having a direct route to truth, the consciousness of each being in a position to perceive mathematical truths directly, through the process of 'seeing'.