I am told that I had a bad temper, and remember being banished to the back hall until civility returned.

During my early years at Minnesota I conducted an evening enzyme seminar.

I participated on debating teams and in student government, and served as senior class president.

The experience reminds me of a favorite saying: Most of the yield from research efforts comes from the coal that is mined while looking for diamonds.

Family trips to Yellowstone and to what are now national parks in Southern Utah, driving the primitive roads and cars of that day, were real adventures.

An unexpected benefit of my career in biochemistry has been travel.

In marked contrast to the University of Wisconsin, Biochemistry was hardly visible at Stanford in 1945, consisting of only two professors in the chemistry department.

Mountain hikes instilled in me a life-long urge to get to the top of any inviting summit or peak.

The excitement of vitamins, nutrition and metabolism permeated the environment.

A painstaking course in qualitative and quantitative analysis by John Wing gave me an appreciation of the need for, and beauty of, accurate measurement.

Over and over, expanding scientific knowledge has shown religious claims to be false.

God of the green pastures and the still waters, please don't help me. I want to do it by myself so that You'll know I've found something I can do for You ... I am David. Amen.

Cole radiated that cool, bad boy sort of confidence—the kind that left most women flustered and ready.

We're all so busy chasing the extraordinary that we forget to stop and be grateful for the ordinary.

Even when you err, it is a thousand times better to err out of conviction than to hide your true opinion to respect some authority.

What's important for my daughter to know is that... if you are fortunate to have opportunity, it is your duty to make sure other people have those opportunities as well.

No matter what the past has dealt you, don't let it destroy your future.

There is a place of imagination, and it is entirely real.

It isn't about games, for me, personally, and it never really was. It was about creating something - anything - far bigger than yourself.

Two sure ways to fail- Think and never do or do and never think.