Life doesn't offer you the perfect opportunity at the perfect time. Opportunities come when you least expect them ... Rarely are opportunities presented to you in a perfect way. In a nice little box with a yellow bow on top. ‘Here, open it, it's perfect. You'll love it.’ Opportunities -- the good ones -- are messy, confusing and hard to recognize. They're risky. They challenge you.

I'd say be just like you. I once had someone tell me that I don't remind them of anyone that they ever met. And I took that as a huge compliment, which meant I was original. And so I would suggest to her that she speak her truth with her life, with her own sense of purpose and pursue her dreams.

so I sometimes think, why should I talk young women into being a scientist if they then end up being sort of disliked or not accepted by their contemporaries and so it’s a tricky business actually.

Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.

So Cambridge rejected me. Quite rightly, although at the time I thought it was a little churlish. So, I had to do it without any university training. ... and I began to realize that there were probably a lot more of these things, and that if you find these things, you get a position in the ladder which you can’t get to unless you have either got an education or something else. So by finding important things, you immediately get into the game, which you’d been excluded from otherwise.