When I was younger I was looking for this magic meaning of life. It's very simple now. Making the lives of others better, doing something of lasting value. That's the meaning of life, it's that simple.

All animals and people have the same core emotion systems in the brain.

A cat can be social, but a dog, we've bred this hyper social animal that's really truly different and will do stuff for us just to please us with praise and stroking.

Some children may need a behavioral approach, whereas other children may need a sensory approach.

I think sometimes parents and teachers fail to stretch kids. My mother had a very good sense of how to stretch me just slightly outside my comfort zone.

I would never talk just to be social. Now, to sit down with a bunch of engineers and talk about the latest concrete forming systems, that's really interesting. Talking with animal behaviorists or with someone who likes to sail, that's interesting. Information is interesting to me. But talking for the sake of talking, I find that quite boring.

These diagnostic profiles like depression, ADHD, autism, dyslexia, it's half science and the other half is a committee of doctors bickering over what it should be, and it has changed. It's not precise like a diagnosis of tuberculosis would be very precise.