they did what good teachers are meant to do, which is inspire you to love literature.

I always think about things, and if something puzzles me… Well, that of course was one of Darwin’s secrets. Whenever something puzzled him, he tried find a theory. He made a conjecture, as (Karl) Popper would call it, and see if it worked out and that’s true even today.

To me, part of what I love about puzzles is that they fuel my curiosity and I’d say curiosity and gratitude are my two favorite virtues. My last book was about gratitude; this book is all about curiosity. Curiosity is what drives puzzlers. They’re like, ‘Why is it? What is it?’

Probably something else I learned at art school, which is the ability to make something from very little using your own imagination. That’s the building block of my career.

I never listened to any noise around me. I listened only to my gut feeling and did what I should have

I wanted to be a physician. And I am a physician, so I fulfilled that dream. I did not know anything about science. I did not know what one was supposed to do in science. I wanted to be a doctor, and I became indeed a doctor.

Diversifying means going abroad…Be in another culture, speak a different language, see how other people think. Leave and then come back.

what I'm really worried about and concerned is the lack of the voice of the leadership.

if you drive yourself to win prizes, I think you will never get it, as you are busy thinking about it. And secondly, this is a bad way of living life.

The world ‘ageing’ itself is an issue: we do not know what it means.