I felt at the time that Eric was much more successful than I, he was extremely productive during his time in Zurich, and worked on many very original projects, germ line, cell lineage, sex determination, where not many people could follow him. I also had the impression that I was dependent on him because he had more fly experience and without him I would not have gotten the job. This made our start in Heidelberg a little difficult, until we sorted things out, and from then on we thoroughly enjoyed working in the same lab.

I think I’ve always been jealous of musicians. You hear the story where Bob Dylan wrote a song in the afternoon and it became the anthem for a generation.

I say envious of people who are erudite. Like if someone knows Latin very well, I’m envious. If someone knows Sanskrit, I’m envious. And I discovered that early on. So I made money on Wall Street because I wanted to make money on Wall Street, but I didn’t think it was worth the effort.

there were a group of scientists from the University of Geneva who conducted a brilliant study. It was one of those studies that I was just so envious that I didn’t do the study and I didn’t come up with the idea.

The love and the light in that book astounds me.

What I’ve really learned in my 43 years is that the body does not lie; the body actually tells you what’s right and wrong. If you get a sinking feeling in your stomach or a heavy heart about something, you shouldn’t do it; and if you get a lifting, light feeling in your body, you should.

By the time I was 19, I was saying, “I’m going to be a writer. This is my path.”

So much of what I’ve learned, so much of what’s good in my life, was learned because something bad happened, or from making the wrong decision. Through bad decisions I learned how to find the ways to make the right ones.

I have two kids, so once we get them off to school, I tool around on email and Facebook longer than I should. Then I shut those things down and get to work.

I think it would be this thing that I learned when I was writing my first book. It would be surrender to your own mediocrity, which sounds kind of sad, right?