I’ve done almost 4,000 operations for brain tumors. I’m thinking of what’s going to happen ten or 12 steps before. I’m anticipating what’s going to happen in the operation, and I’m comfortable with where we are.

Being a scientist is about resilience because science is exploring the unknown, just as an immigrant is exploring the unknown. In both, you are on an uncertain journey and you have to find your own North Star.

And finally, change requires more than just speaking out -- it requires listening, as well. In particular, it requires listening to those with whom you disagree, and being prepared to compromise. When I was a state senator, I helped pass Illinois's first racial profiling law, and one of the first laws in the nation requiring the videotaping of confessions in capital cases. And we were successful because, early on, I engaged law enforcement.

Well, it wasn’t a game to me. We were taught, interestingly enough, given the current state of political affairs, that you should try not to hate anyone, that hatred was a sickness and a weakness, and that there were very few people who were completely evil, so you should go out of your way to figure out what makes them tick and see if you can find some way to communicate with them. I learned that more with my family — even before I was old enough to know what I was doing —when I was eating meals, my grandmother’s brother and his family had — they had four kids, and they always fed a lot of people, and we ate there a lot, and they would talk about whatever had happened that week. And the kids could talk, but they had to prove they could listen first, so before I could tell a story I had to recount what I had just heard, because if you weren’t listening, nobody wanted to listen to you. And it was like a primer in human nature, and I was fortunate in having people all along the way who tried to help explain other people to me, and I developed an obsessive interest in doing it.

Maestro Abreu always said something very, very beautiful. He said, “The culture for poor people cannot be a poor culture.” You know, and he said in the sense that for the poor people, for the people that needs, we have to give the best, the best that we can.