Eight months later, having left Columbia, I was studying physics in a summer program and working in Colorado when I decided to enroll as a graduate student in biophysics.

I was born in Montreal in 1939, the second son of poor immigrants.

For our immediate family and relatives, Canada was a land of opportunity.

About seven years later I was given a book about the periodic table of the elements. For the first time I saw the elegance of scientific theory and its predictive power.

I spent eighteen months as a graduate student in physics at Columbia University, waiting unhappily for an opportunity to work in a laboratory and wondering if I should continue in physics.

The RNA World referred to an hypothetical stage in the origin of life on Earth.

Nevertheless, as is a frequent occurrence in science, a general hypothesis was constructed from a few specific instances of a phenomenon.

I should mention that while I was growing up, Einstein was presented as a worthy role model for a young boy who was good at his studies.

My intention was to enroll at McGill University but an unexpected series of events led me to study physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

I'm just another stupid human.

They've got organizations for people like me with stupid preoccupations.

The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear - and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.

It's a mark of any icon that it should be open to iconoclasm.

Natural Theology says not only look up and look out-it also says look down and look in, and you will find the proofs of the reality of God in the depth of your own nature.

Everyone's a racist. It's the one thing that makes us all the same.

In Scotland, beautiful as it is, it was always raining. Even when it wasn't raining, it was about to rain, or had just rained. It's a very angry sky.

As a writer, if you're prepared to work from your own wound, you're allowing people into the most vulnerable parts of yourself.

In this time of challenge, I am asking the prime minister to address Congress on the grave threats radical Islam and Iran pose to our security and way of life.

We're all travelling heavy with illusions.