Having advanced well beyond what the French call "a certain age," I am often asked to convey to younger people helpful advice and counsel. So I will open these remarks with the best advice I ever received. The advice, which I have several times shared with others, was given to me by my mother-in-law on my wedding day. She had a prescription for a happy, enduring marriage: "It pays," she said, "it pays sometimes to be a little deaf."

I would advise them to aim high. To set their sights at a pretty tough target and don’t be too worried if you’re not successful at first. Just keep persisting and keep improving your standards, getting better and better and ultimately, you’ve got a pretty fair chance at achieving your desired goal. ... But, I do think that virtually everybody that’s born has the ability to be very competent at doing something. I think that, in itself, is worthy of aiming towards, just to be competent at doing anything you particularly wish to do.

Every kindness I received, small or big, convinced me that there could never be enough of it in our world. To be kind is to respond with sensitivity and human warmth to the hopes and needs of others. Even the briefest touch of kindness can lighten a heavy heart.

Study. Be honest. Don’t violate the laws and get in trouble. Get you a good spouse that will support you, because you never stop working and studying. The fact that you get the place just means you’ve started as far as the work and the pressure is concerned. That’s the only advice I’d know to give.

A very important influence. Now when I look back on it, it was my father who was against the gender constraints of my time. And my mother, she used to be a working woman herself, she joined the National Guards. She was a captain in the National Guards. She was the first woman in Karachi to own a car and to drive, and people used to talk about her because they said, you know, “We’re not supposed to drive cars.” But when I look back on it, it was my mother who taught that a woman grew up to be married and to have children, and she would tell my father in front of me, “Why do you want to educate her? No man will want to marry her.” So all the time, for her, success depended on having a good catch as a husband, and having children. Whereas for my father, he broke free of those constraints, and he insisted that I have an education. He said, “Boys and girls are equal. I want my daughter to have the same opportunities.”