There are a few things I dismiss and a few I believe in thoroughly. The former include economic forecasts, which I think don't add value, and the list of the latter starts with cycles and the need to prepare for them.

Yes, but not with a formula. So there are many, many efforts now to decentralize and they create a rigid formula and give people rules from on top and say, 'Now it's yours.' And that isn't worked very well either. … And, you think about the variety. If you look at a countryside, think of the variety out there in terms of the ecological variety. Well, if people are going to manage ecological variety, no single set of rules will work in a semi-arid versus a tropical-wet region. They have to be different.

These mandarin-precious-princess-and-the-pea notions about a writer’s “special place” just didn’t match my life.

I held out for participation in the 1984 election the dictatorship called, even if I knew it would be rigged. I was warned by the lawyers of the opposition that I ran the grave risk of legitimizing the forgone results of elections that were clearly going to be fraudulent. But I was not fighting for lawyers, but for the people in whose intelligence I had implicit faith. By the exercise of democracy, even in a dictatorship, they would be prepared for democracy when it came.

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

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

I always chose to surround myself with good people no matter my career. I picked teachers and mentors who promised me a hard life.

The achievement is not the Nobel, the achievement is the science.

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

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.