I think the best learning is done with active manipulation. And we need to be able to work with our hands; it's not just about using our brains.

It's very important to put children in an environment where they can take things apart; where they can break things and then learn to fix them; where they can trust their hands and know their capacity to manipulate objects.

My life is pretty small. Even as a successful scientist, I'm not a public figure. I like people - I just don't know that many!

I have learned that nothing gets readers so fired up as saying something everyone knows is true.

As an environmental scientist, I think our first need is to feed and shelter and nurture. That has always required the exploitation of plant life, and it always will.

I like weeds and hardy plants.

Plants are not like us, and the more you study plants, the more different and deep ways you see that they are not like us.

I grew up in my father's laboratory and played beneath the chemical benches until I was tall enough to play on them.

We must continue as in millennia past, nourishing the future as we feed ourselves and, each year, plant only the very best of what we have collectively engineered.

I love the quiet forest that stands between my lab and my home.