Chris O'Donnell

I try not to get too rattled about things that aren't that important - there's a different outburst for when the kids are reaching for a knife in the kitchen versus the reaction I have when they just won't stop talking. And my wife and I have mellowed out as we've gone along.

I think it's easiest to teach by example. My dad didn't tell us to work hard; we just saw how hard he worked. I know I have shortcomings - like a short fuse - but I've learned you can't come home from a long day of work and snap at the kids.

To ask questions can become the laziest and wobbliest occupation of a mind, but when you must yourself answer the problem that you have posed, you will meditate your question with care and frame it with precision.

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.