Coming up with a way to fix mistakes challenges your creativity and your critical thinking skills and your resourcefulness. Often you end up with something better than what you planned on in the first place.

My friend Josh Glenn compiles terrific lists of genre novels from the mid-20th century. His latest is a list of the ten best adventure novels of 1966. Josh also includes the cover art of early editions of the books, which are always much better than the art on newer editions. I want to read every book in this list!

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was George Gamow's 'One Two Three ... Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science.'

If you build your own chair, there is a lot of things that happen. You could probably buy a nice chair for less money than a chair that you built yourself, and it might even look better, but if you build that chair, you're going to take care of it and maintain it because it's your chair. If it breaks, you know how to fix it.

My parents are professors; they're intellectual. I spent a lot of time reading books. To me, everyone always looks like they do in your imagination. And in my imagination, the characters always looked like me.

I am grateful to my mother for insisting that I complete my education.

I came to graduate school at Harvard University in 1954. My thesis supervisor, Julian Schwinger, had about a dozen doctoral students at a time. Getting his ear was as difficult as it was rewarding. I called my thesis 'The Vector Meson in Elementary Particle Decays', and it showed an early commitment to an electroweak synthesis.

Ultimately, it is only the witness who convinces people, not the teacher.