As someone who made a difference.

I don’t think I care.

That I did everything I had to and I never gave up!

Firm, fair, fun.

There's only one thing where I… if I had the opportunity to live my life over again where I probably would make a change.…I think if I had shortened that period and had earlier begun to work on basic evolutionary theory on history of biology and particularly on the philosophy of biology, I could have achieved some things which now I will never be able to achieve because at age 93, one knows that one doesn't live forever.

My mentor was Professor Erwin Stresemann, who was at that time clearly the world's leading ornithologist, a man who was not only highly intelligent, but very hard working; he edited two journals, he wrote a big textbook, he supervised students, he sent out expeditions.

Unfortunately I have too many projects going. Two of them, fortunately, are already in the editors’ hands. One is this book on the birds of Northern Melanesia I’m doing with Jared Diamond, and that deals with speciation and particular ecology, biogeographic dispersal and all the other questions.

That is a difficult question to answer because I’ve worked in so many fields. I’ve worked in five different fields. Now which are the most important? In some ways, the development of the biological species concept, which I did not invent, but I certainly was the person that brought it to general knowledge. And the whole field of new systematics — I really am the one who developed it — was one of my major contributions. There’s another one, which is still not yet realized by almost anybody. I have done more, I believe, for the development of a philosophy of biology than any other person.

One of the answers is that very often I see a statement made by somebody which clearly to me is wrong, and then I work out what is the real right answer, and this happens to me very often.

No sir. I'm rather dismayed how many days I have to work on my willpower very strongly in order to get out of bed before 8 o'clock.…I write letters, I write manuscripts, in addition to the book that is in press I have two manuscripts that are going to be published some time this or next year, and I have a whole list of manuscripts that I would like to write.