I went in with Jack and Leslie, into this room that was lined with brick, and there on the side I can remember very clearly was this small model with plates for the bases - the original model with everything screwed together.

He told me that Francis Crick and Jim Watson had solved the structure of DNA, so we decided to go across to Cambridge to see it. This was in April of 1953.

During this period, I became interested in how the new techniques of cloning and sequencing DNA could influence the study of genetics and I was an early and active proponent of the Human Genome Sequencing Project.

There was still food rationing in England and life was difficult all through my 2 year stay in Oxford.

The modern computer hovers between the obsolescent and the nonexistent.

I completed the first three years of primary school in one year and was admitted to the local school the age of six directly into the fourth year, some two years younger than all my contemporaries.

I set up a laboratory in the Department of Physiology in the Medical School in South Africa and begin to try to find a bacteriophage system which we might use to solve the genetic code.

In 1995, I founded The Molecular Sciences Institute with a gift from the Philip Morris Company where I hoped that we could create an environment where young people could pursue science in an atmosphere of harmonious purpose and high intellectual challenge.

In my second year, after moving to the Medical School, I began the courses of Anatomy and Physiology. I had begun to see that I was interested in cells and their functions.

I also became interested in chemistry and gradually accumulated enough test tubes and other glassware to do chemical experiments, using small quantities of chemicals purchased from a pharmacy supply house.

So that's when I saw the DNA model for the first time, in the Cavendish, and that's when I saw that this was it. And in a flash you just knew that this was very fundamental.

The moment I saw the model and heard about the complementing base pairs I realized that it was the key to understanding all the problems in biology we had found intractable - it was the birth of molecular biology.

Living most of the time in a world created mostly in one's head, does not make for an easy passage in the real world.

Many have gone on to do important scientific work but all remember those wonderful times when we and our science were young and our excitement in meeting new challenges knew no bounds.

I lived at home and I cycled every morning to the railway station to travel by train to Johannesburg followed by a walk to the University, carrying sandwiches for my lunch and returning in the evening the same way.

I went in with Jack and Leslie, into this room that was lined with brick, and there on the side I can remember very clearly was this small model with plates for the bases - the original model with everything screwed together.

We got our revolution out of the way long before the French and the Americans. The monarchy was restored, but the sovereignty of our parliament, made up of and elected by a slowly widening constituency of the people, has never been seriously challenged since then.

I get meals when I can, or I have protein shakes.

Roosevelt's declaration that Americans had 'nothing to fear but fear itself' was a glorious piece of inspirational rhetoric and just as gloriously wrong.

We played one warm-up gig at this bar that was kinda like that bar in 'The Blues Brothers' with the chicken wire. This place called The Brick House, in Housatonic. I really can't believe we're going to play for people in New York City. I'm terrified, but it's a small enough room. But it's really just supposed to be for the fun of it.

The world of scholarship is much more measured in its appreciation and also its criticism than the world of popular literature.

I'm a lifelong 'Doctor Who' fan. Like, Peter Davison/Colin Baker, lifelong fan.

The universe is more than mere matter in motion. It and we were brought into being by a Creator who seeks our good.

No one ever gets too big to make mistakes. The secret is that the big man is greater than his mistakes, because he rises right out of them and passes beyond them.

You're a sovereign as a citizen. If you're not involved in your government, you're not doing your job. In the long run that's very bad for the Republic.

Fine, Java MIGHT be a good example of what a programming language should be like. But Java applications are good examples of what applications SHOULDN'T be like.

A decade in advertising exposed me to plenty of schemers and backstabbers. But honestly, advertising is wonderful training for fiction. Writing novels is much easier if you've ever tried to write a billboard.

I did 125 films, and over 100 television shows, and you've never seen the same character twice.

I will go for a simple girl who's completely in tune with me and who gets along with my family.

It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.

There are no college courses to build up self-esteem or high school or elementary school. If you don't get those values at a early age, nurtured in your home, you don't get them.

Besides inquiries as to our general well-being, the first thing asked about us, in our first seconds of being alive, is whether we're a boy or girl. Our first passport through this world is our genitals.

From the failure of the humanist tradition to participate fully or to act decisively civilizations may perhaps crumble or perish at the hands of barbarians. But unless the humanist tradition itself in some form survives there can really be no civilization at all.

I don't know why people are so surprised by my live performances. My approach is so simple; every song I sing, every story I tell, every move I make, must move the audience to laughter, tears or inspiration. Otherwise, why should I do it?

Democracy The state of affairs in which you consent to having your pocket picked and elect the best man to do it.

I have a huge, active imagination, and I think I'm really scared of being alone; because if I'm left to my own devices, I'll just turn into a madwoman.

There is always tension between the possibilities we aspire to and our wounded memories and past mistakes.

I don't have a grand master plan, but I try to be thoughtful when I can and also silly. It's part of the fun.

With a book, there's no volume to turn up. You're very naked with a book.

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.