My mother often mailed me articles from 'Reader's Digest' about advances in DNA chemistry. No matter how I tried to explain it to her, she never grasped the concept that I could have been writing those articles, that something I had invented made most of those DNA discoveries possible.

I went to high school in Columbia. I met my first wife, Richards, whom I married while I was working on a B.S. in chemistry at Georgia Tech. She bore Louise, and I studied. I learned most of the useful technical things - math, physics, chemistry - that I now use during those four years.

I like writing about biology, not doing it.

The press made me something I really wasn't and I tried to live up to what they made me.

Natural DNA is a tractless coil, like an unwound and tangled audiotape on the floor of the car in the dark.

I would never go to a gym. How could I do it? So I tried to do it in my house and it doesn't work.