I am of Russian-Jewish distraction.

Love is the most difficult and dangerous form of courage. Courage is the most desperate, admirable and noble kind of love.

In dreams begin responsibilities.

I always cause those who are near to me more suffering than pleasure.

My three years at the NIH were critical in my scientific education. I learned an immense amount about the research process: developing assays, purifying macromolecules, documenting a discovery by many approaches, and writing clear manuscripts describing what is known and what remains to be investigated.

As much as I like teaching and students, it's a kind of rigor, a discipline, that's against my body.

I just downloaded '1984' for my iPod, but I've read that before. It just hearkens back to the 'romance' of my high-school days. I really liked the space I was in when I was reading it.

I think we were raised in a nice Texas Jewish family where education was the most important thing, and close behind that was the arts. It was emphasized and expected that we'd play piano.