I had this rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life, what had been my childhood dream.

I know it's a rare privilege, but if one can really tackle something in adult life that means that much to you, then it's more rewarding than anything I can imagine.

That particular odyssey is now over. My mind is now at rest.

I tried to fit it in with some previous broad conceptual understanding of some part of mathematics that would clarify the particular problem I was thinking about.

However impenetrable it seems, if you don't try it, then you can never do it.

Fermat said he had a proof.

Mathematicians aren't satisfied because they know there are no solutions up to four million or four billion, they really want to know that there are no solutions up to infinity.

Always try the problem that matters most to you.

Well, some mathematics problems look simple, and you try them for a year or so, and then you try them for a hundred years, and it turns out that they're extremely hard to solve.

Pure mathematicians just love to try unsolved problems - they love a challenge.

The greatest problem for mathematicians now is probably the Riemann Hypothesis.

Perhaps the methods I needed to complete the proof would not be invented for a hundred years. So even if I was on the right track, I could be living in the wrong century.

I'm sure that some of them will be very hard and I'll have a sense of achievement again, but nothing will mean the same to me - there's no other problem in mathematics that could hold me the way that this one did.

I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days.

I had this rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life, what had been my childhood dream.

I realized that anything to do with Fermat's Last Theorem generates too much interest.

The only way I could relax was when I was with my children.

The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself.

I don't believe Fermat had a proof. I think he fooled himself into thinking he had a proof.

But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library.

Just because we can't find a solution it doesn't mean that there isn't one.

We've lost something that's been with us for so long, and something that drew a lot of us into mathematics. But perhaps that's always the way with math problems, and we just have to find new ones to capture our attention.

There's also a sense of freedom. I was so obsessed by this problem that I was thinking about if all the time - when I woke up in the morning, when I went to sleep at night, and that went on for eight years.

I really believed that I was on the right track, but that did not mean that I would necessarily reach my goal.

Then when I reached college I realized that many people had thought about the problem during the 18th and 19th centuries and so I studied those methods.

I was so obsessed by this problem that I was thinking about it all the time - when I woke up in the morning, when I went to sleep at night - and that went on for eight years.

I loved doing problems in school.

It's fine to work on any problem, so long as it generates interesting mathematics along the way - even if you don't solve it at the end of the day.

I hope that seeing the excitement of solving this problem will make young mathematicians realize that there are lots and lots of other problems in mathematics which are going to be just as challenging in the future.

There are proofs that date back to the Greeks that are still valid today.

It could be that the methods needed to take the next step may simply be beyond present day mathematics. Perhaps the methods I needed to complete the proof would not be invented for a hundred years.

I loved doing problems in school. I'd take them home and make up new ones of my own. But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library. I was just browsing through the section of math books and I found this one book, which was all about one particular problem - Fermat's Last Theorem.

Pure mathematician just love to try unsolved problems they love a challenge.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

We've had it very clear to the Bosnians that our obligation to equip and train their forces is completely conditional on the foreign forces being gone.

My parents were amazing people who had no business being together - and they knew it.

Teachers started recognizing me and praising me for being smart in science and that made me want to be even smarter in science!