Primes are the atoms of the arithmetic - the hydrogen and oxygen of the world of numbers

The reason why we do maths is because it's like poetry. It's about patterns, and that really turned me on. It made me feel that maths was in tune with the other things I liked doing.

Mathematics is a place where you can do things which you can't do in the real world.

Mathematics has beauty and romance. It's not a boring place to be, the mathematical world. It's an extraordinary place; it's worth spending time there.

The point is with good maths skills you have just wonderful opportunities and if you don't have good maths skills, there are just so many things that you won't be able to do.

You know, I'm not terribly fast at my times tables, because that's not what I think mathematics is about.

Theory is needed to tell you where to look.

The power of mathematics is often to change one thing into another, to change geometry into language.

I'm obviously attuned to pick up mathematics whenever I can see it. But in Mozart there is a lot of conscious use of mathematical symbolism and numbers in order to try and give messages.

If you can make yourself symmetrical, you're sending out a sign that you've got good genes, you've got a good upbringing and therefore you'll make a good mate.

I think science is a foreign land for many people, so I think of my role as an ambassador's job.

No matter how strong you are, you cannot hold open the jaws of a great-white shark with your bare hands... that can do your brain.

God wants worshipers before workers; indeed the only acceptable workers are those who have learned the lost art of worship.

The events with Henry III happened, obviously the way it happened, liberties were taken.

That's one of the benefits of working on big budget films. You work with people who have a lot of experience and you get to learn a lot.

Whomever it is you were born to be, whatever your soul was coded to accomplish, whatever lessons you were born to learn, now is the time to get serious and get going.

... the student skit at Christmas contained a plaintive line: "Give us Master's exams that our faculty can pass, or give us a faculty that can pass our Master's exams."

I am an artist and have no right buggering about with verbs and split infinitives, which is what being a writer says to me.

I like it when journalists are nice to me, and it's happening more and more.

It's certainly easy to mock some things ... Oddly enough though I've never found it easy to mock anything of value. Only things that are tawdry and fatuous - perhaps it's just me.

I'm pretty much a couch potato.