Probably the single most important thing about the Nobel Prize for most people is whether they get the coveted parking space on campus.

As a scientist, you feel a sense of team spirit for your country but you also have a sense of team spirit for the international community.

You want your mind to be boggled. That is a pleasure in and of itself. And it's more a pleasure if it's boggled by something that you can then demonstrate is really, really true

It's an unusual opportunity, a chance for so many people to share in the excitement and the fun of the fact that we may be on to hints as to what the Universe is made out of. I guess the whole point of a prize like this is to be able to get that out into the community

Astronomers ought to be able to ask fundamental questions without accelerators

From our point of view, the most exciting thing would be if we discovered something really fundamental in our understanding was just off a bit - and that now we have a chance to revisit it

So it's possible that someday, by understanding a little bit more about how the world works, it will come back to help us in some other way that will be surprising