Which decision paid off only after many years, when its value could not yet be proved?

I knew what I had done wrong. I had followed the experts and put the money I had in television. The second time around I spent almost no money on television. The only money I spent on television, I spent on Ted Turner's station, late at night on something called Creature Feature and wrestling. Because those were things that I knew people looked at. But we spent most of our money organizing people door-to-door.

I've had some downturns in my career and various problems, but in fact all those kind of problems turned into something even better. It's kind of amazing, various times in my career.

I was fortunate even from that point of view because I got a very good research collaboration agreement with Upjohn, the American Upjohn company. So that could help me to go on with my research.

And so, I went to Texas Tech El Paso. I could literally throw a stone out of my window and hit someone in Juárez, Mexico. And yet, it was the most beautiful place to practice, because in that county hospital we saw everything in young people, untreated; it felt very meaningful, but my evenings were mine to write and to develop my voice, and my weekends were mine. And I eventually got hired to Stanford in a roundabout way, largely because of that.

I would like to have been concerned about this existential threat sooner.

there was already an area of research, the autonomic nervous system, which was relatively neglected. It was between cardiology and neurology, and these areas in between are often the province of neither specialty, and so can lag behind. And that was the area I chose and this changed the second half of my life, if you like, because I then set up a laboratory.