“Art is subject to arbitrary fashion.”

“Do we care about these people that are HIV-positive whose lives have been ruined? Those are the people I'm the most concerned about. Every night I think about this.”

“Each of us have things and thoughts and descriptions of an amazing universe in our possession that kings in the 17th Century would have gone to war to possess.”

“Here's a bunch of people practising a new set of behavioural norms. Apparently it didn't work because a lot of them got sick. That's the conclusion. You don't necessarily know why it happened. But you start there.”

“I can say exactly what I feel about any issue, and I'm going to do that.”

“I like writing about biology, not doing it.”

“I love a microphone and a big crowd; I'm an entertainer, I guess.”

“If reincarnation is a useful biological idea it is certain that somewhere in the universe it will happen.”

“I'm really optimistic in the mornings.”

“In the 1950s in Columbia, South Carolina, it was considered OK for kids to play with weird things. We could go to the hardware store and buy 100 feet of dynamite fuse.”

“It's not blaming the victim. It's not anybody's fault. They just did something that didn't work, that's all.”

“Law shuttles between freeing us and enslaving us.”

“My grandfather milked several cows twice a day and supplied the neighbours with dairy products. He liked to go visiting around the county on Saturdays, and he also enjoyed the neighbours when they came by once a week with their empty milk jars. He walked them out to their cars and hung over the driver's side window until they drove off.”

“My mother would give my brothers and me a pile of catalogues and let us pick what we wanted for Christmas.”

“PCR made it easier to see that certain people are infected with HIV.”

“People don't realize that molecules themselves are somewhat hypothetical, and that their interactions are more so, and that the biological reactions are even more so.”

“Science consistently produces a new crop of miraculous truths and dazzling devices every year.”

“Science grows like a weed every year.”

“Scientists are doing an awful lot of damage to the world in the name of helping it. I don't mind attacking my own fraternity because I am ashamed of it.”

“Sometimes in the morning, when it's a good surf, I go out there, and I don't feel like it's a bad world.”

“The mystery of that damn virus has been generated by the USD2 billion a year they spend on it.”

“They can't pooh-pooh me now, because of who I am.”

“We are the recipients of scientific method. We can each be a creative and active part of it if we so desire.”

“We were fortunate to have the Russians as our childhood enemies. We practiced hiding under our desks in case they had the temerity to drop a nuclear weapon.”

“You can't ask your pharmacist to stock larger quantities of potassium nitrate because you want to make a bigger rocket.”

“You make observations, write theories to fit them, try experiments to disprove the theories and, if you can't, you've got something.”