So much of what I’ve learned, so much of what’s good in my life, was learned because something bad happened, or from making the wrong decision. Through bad decisions I learned how to find the ways to make the right ones.

you have no idea where your power, if you have any power, comes from and then, when it vanishes, you have no idea why it’s vanished.

consciousness is the “I am-ness” of life. We can only say, “I am,” because of consciousness. And without consciousness, we wouldn’t exist.

today, I'm a very happy man, not because of financial success, but because of the people in my life.

I look for how to get out of it. I try to use here [points to her head]. I tried to read, I tried to talk to others. I tried my best to get out of it. I had lots of times climbing one Everest to find that there is a bigger Everest, but don’t you find your life like this too?

First of all, I believe that the results of science should be fully given to the community. Fully. Absolutely. And all types of competition such as who did it first and “I cannot tell him because he will copy me” and so on – these are not arguments. Society financed this science, if not directly, then the education and the way I got there, so society should get back what I found. It is not my finding. In this, I am not very popular, I must say.

people in power tend to take advantage of that power and this can be both men and women.

I did not meet Franklin but admired her work and scientific attitude. I did meet Hodgkin and learned a lot from her.

I still don’t understand everything about the ribosome. I must say that the more lectures I give and the more questions that I get, the more thoughts they trigger. And also, we are now interested in the proto-ribosome, how life started. So we are trying to understand this and this really excites me, not just from the point of view of philosophy, we are trying to show it.

Ultimately, my research was curiosity driven, which kept me active even in low periods.