"Part of being a scientist is compulsive dedication, the insistence on working without rest until you get what you’re after…the best discoveries always seem to be made in the small hours of the morning, when most people are asleep, when there are no disturbances and the mind becomes contemplative. You’re out in a lonely [laboratory] somewhere, looking at the numbers on reams of paper spewing out of a computer. You look and look, and suddenly you see some numbers that aren’t like the rest – a spike in the data. You apply some statistical tests and look for errors, but no matter what you do, the spike’s still there. It’s real. You’ve found something. There’s just no feeling like it in the world.”
-Leon Lederman