I grew up playing with kids who were the kids of people my parents grew up playing with, and they know me like nobody else. I thought everybody was that way when I was growing up, and then I left to go to college, and I realised that the world is full of strangers.

The wood of any tree growing anywhere records fairly faithfully the oxygen and hydrogen chemistry of the water the plant has access to through precipitation.

There is a fundamental and culturally learned power imbalance between men and women, and it follows us into the workplace. The violence born of this imbalance follows us also. We would like to believe that it stops short of following us into the laboratory and into the field - but it does not.

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.

An important event in my scientific life has been my appointment as a Professor at the College de France in 1973.

Self-discovery is so important in identity processing: who you hang out with, what clothes you wear, what shows you see. As a kid, I found out about things through friends. I would go to hardcore shows with 50 people.

You live in a deranged age, more deranged that usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.

Science-fiction cities in general, I think, are so hard to get right, because it's so easy to just play some cheesy music or do something that takes you right out of it, but 'Blade Runner' got it right, and I love that about the film.