I think a very big curiosity. I’m very curious and I like to understand things and not only science but also other things where I just try to find out why things work or how things work. Science and nature caught my attention as a small child already. I was growing up in a city but we had a garden and I loved the garden and then often on vacation I was at a farm and I loved these animals and plants and so on, so I was attracted very early on and then we had a very good teaching actually at my … I don’t know whether my teachers really had much of a role because I was determined very early, but then I also did music and I did languages and Literature and so on. I have broad interests actually other than science, but this is really true, this curiosity.

Wonder Why would say, 'Why is the sky blue?'…Then Wonder Why would tell you. I was fascinated, because I wanted to know how things worked ... that was my introduction to science.

I wanted to know. I asked a lot of questions and she would say, "Read, read."…So she inspired me a great deal.

In that brief transition time, it felt like the question to ask yourself is what is the biggest learning opportunity? Where can I grow more?

I feel some sort of chemistry with the subject.…The bar for me is when it’s interesting enough that I would talk about it on my own time.

It used to be dosing people out of my purse at parties. Now it’s leaving the hang at 11 p.m. to get in bed.

I wrote while listening to Caribou, Kamasi Washington, Frank Ocean, Mitski. Towards the end, a lot of Talk Talk.

I actually did write a novel. I worked on it for five years, and then I shelved it because it was bad.

I’m always afraid of false certainty about things

I needed to physically be totally alone and be in a different place to get going.