Pix is probably the most successful payment infrastructure run by a government in history. I think Pix has been what has allowed a country like Brazil to leapfrog developed economies like the U.S. and in Europe, and has positioned Brazil today probably five years ahead of the U.S. I don't think anybody understands that, and probably in the U.S. they didn't really expect that.

It’s the world that's messed up, and it’s the world’s twisted view of what beauty should be. They need to change, it’s never you.

For power to stay in power, the powerful have to impose some level of fear over the people that they are in power over. If you have power, you make decisions and if you make decisions you can probably keep power.

I think it is an approach that is very ill suited to this particular problem. This whole issue of presenting it as a moral issue to my mind that actually is a capitulation to a kind of neo-liberal ideology which tries to reduce all collective action to cases of individual choices.

But you know that there are so many people that are equal to us or better that didn’t get the prize. You cannot go round the whole world and ask “are you better than me?”

I like reading, I like swimming.I go snorkeling if I can. But not because I’m stuck, but because I enjoy them. And when I am swimming or whatever, I find I have more time to think.

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

Oh ya, I doubted more than expected. I had doubts all the time. The way was extremely, extremely difficult. … At one point I had to describe what I am doing to a person who is a great intellectual but not a scientist, and I told him what we felt is that we are climbing mountains in order to reach the climax – and these mountains are like the Everest, the biggest most difficult to climb – only to find out that there is another mountain waiting behind it to be climbed afterwards. So every climbing was an achievement but there was a bigger problem behind it or above it. I had lots of minutes that I didn't expect, but I thought science in general and this science particularly is worth the effort – even if we would never get the ultimate result.

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

When I was a child and interested in discoveries, the first book that made an impression on me was called “Discoveries of the World” but it wasn’t about geography, it was about Marie Curie! [laughs] And then there is a beautiful Italian story – from the mountains in Italy to the Pyrenees, a kid goes to look for a flower with a golden heart inside for his ill mother. This made a big impression on me.  I also read lots of Isreali authors that you probably haven’t heard of.