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 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 sometimes lie awake at night trying to think of something funny that Richard Nixon said.

To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.

I'm looking forward to providing the men of Seattle with an evening where they can kick back, light up a cigar and enjoy a night to themselves. Women, we can't technically keep you out, but please stay at home.

Prayer: the key of the day and the lock of the night.

I knew that my staying up would not change the election result if I were defeated, while if elected I had a hard day ahead of me. So I thought a night's rest was best in any event.

Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets.

You know, nobody eats in England. Three or four pints of English beer a night fills you. I can't say I'm very impressed with the food in America. it's all sort of bland. Like turkey sandwiches.

I wanted to do an episode about Chuck having a gambling problem. I wanted to portray my addiction on the show. But I think it's a little edgy for Saturday night.

What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?

On that road of the informer, it is always night. I cannot ever inform against anyone without feeling something die within me. I inform without pleasure, because it is necessary.

We did a different show every night. We'd open a show, and then two weeks later we'd open the next show. And two weeks later we'd open the third show until we had all eight running. And it was just one of the richest experiences I'd ever had in my theatrical life.

I hate leaving home. I love what I do, but I'd love to go home every night.

I was babysitting the night High School Musical premiered last year. I watched with the kids and we sang along to the lyrics. I was making $12 an hour.

The name Air Supply sort of came from nowhere. I get a lot of my things in dreams and I just had a dream about it one night, and I woke up and said that's just got to be the name. That was in 1975.

I have never had problems sleeping the night before a race.

When my mother died, I had to go on air that night and do jokes.