Saul Perlmutter

As a scientist, you feel a sense of team spirit for your country but you also have a sense of team spirit for the international community.

Astronomers ought to be able to ask fundamental questions without accelerators. 

For almost a century, the Universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, the discovery that this expansion is accelerating is astounding. If the expansion will continue to speed up, the Universe will end in ice. 

From our point of view, the most exciting thing would be if we discovered something really fundamental in our understanding was just off a bit - and that now we have a chance to revisit it. 

I was one of those kids who always thought that we should know how the world works around us. 

I will say that growing up as a kid in an urban environment and having lived in cities all my life, the one achievement that everyone can look forward to is getting the perfect parking spot. 

If you ask almost any of them, 'Do you stand behind your theory? Is this the answer?' I think almost everyone would say, 'No, no, no. I'm just trying to expand the range of possibilities.' We really don't know what's going on. 

If you're puzzled by what dark energy is, you're in good company.

It is a tough choice between ending up in the cold or ending up in a fiery blast.

It seemed like my favourite kind of job - a wonderful chance to ask something absolutely fundamental: the fate of the Universe and whether the Universe was infinite or not.

It's an unusual opportunity, a chance for so many people to share in the excitement and the fun of the fact that we may be on to hints as to what the Universe is made out of. I guess the whole point of a prize like this is to be able to get that out into the community.

It's interesting to wake up at 3 in the morning by someone saying they're a reporter and they want to know how you feel. I felt fine, but I said, 'Well, why do you ask?'

Nobody really expects a Nobel Prize call.

Probably the single most important thing about the Nobel Prize for most people is whether they get the coveted parking space on campus.

So it's possible that someday, by understanding a little bit more about how the world works, it will come back to help us in some other way that will be surprising.

The original project began because we know the universe is expanding. Everybody had assumed that gravity would slow down the expansion of the universe and everything would come to a halt and collapse. The big surprise was it was actually speeding up.

There are still so many questions to answer. When you look at any part of the universe, you have to feel humbled.