In the last 24 years that I have played for India I have made new friends, and before that I have had friends from my childhood. They have all had a terrific contribution. As and when I have called them to come and bowl to me at the nets, they have left their work aside to come and help me. Be it joining me on holidays and having discussions with me on cricket, or how I was a little stressed and wanting to find a solution so I can perform better. All those moments my friends were with me. Even for when I was injured, I would wake up in the morning because I couldn't sleep and thought that my career was over because of injuries, that is when my friends have woken up at 3 o'clock in the morning to drive with me and make me believe that my career was not over. Life would be incomplete without all those friends.

No, because I started working on ribosomes when I was a post doc, in 1978, when it would have been impossible, really, to solve it. But, it was just a fundamental problem in biology. And we felt, no matter, anything we do to chip away at the problem would be useful. So it was more that that attracted me. And I think the fact that it was large and kind of difficult to come to grips with, yes, it was attractive. Really what was attractive was that it was a fundamental problem.

So I find that teaching and the students keep life going, and I would never accept any position in which somebody has invented a happy solution for me where I don’t have to teach.  Never.

I was not much taken by their poems, but I liked Leconte de Lisle’s translation of Homer, especially his Iliad, which brought me the classical world. I have often felt a great difference between myself and the next generation, those who were twenty in 1950, although it is only a few years, because I had read in my grandfather’s library books that were later less accessible. The next generation was reading Michaux, Prévert, Éluard—twentieth-century authors. I’m glad to have read the Greek classics, and French ones too—writers like Racine and Corneille.

So I urge my sisters, and my brothers, not to be afraid. Be not afraid to denounce injustice, though you may be outnumbered. Be not afraid to seek peace, even if your voice may be small. Be not afraid to demand peace.

The progress we’ve made at home. For example, our debt issue. We inherited a 3.7 billion debt for our population and our export earnings. Today a majority of that debt has been cancelled and we’ve completed our first program with the IMF (International Monetary Fund). And also the restoration of hope. Today, you know, our image of being a pariah state, a failed state, has turned around completely. Whereas people — Liberians — were afraid to carry a Liberian passport, because you’d be seen as this nation of death and destruction. Today, Liberians are very proud to carry their passport because everybody sees Liberia as beginning to be uplifted and beginning to become a possible model of success, a post-conflict success story. I’m very proud of that turnaround in our image.

Mine has been a long journey, a lifetime journey to Oslo. It was shaped by the values of my parents and by my two grandmothers – indigenous Liberians, farmers and market traders – neither of whom could read or write. They taught me that only through service is one's life truly blessed.