I don’t know if I’m proud really, but if I have to compliment myself, I would just do it on those occasions where I have had a chance to save a life of a person or a child. This is in my eyes a real achievement. The rest? You try, but the ultimate test is saving life.

I guess my very first award when I was 10 years old, at the Adelaide River country music competition,

I’m very happy and I’m very proud, because to be in the line which contains so many really great writers and poets gives me power to use my original language, the Hungarian language. I am really very proud and very happy to use this little language.

The power of this victory rests on the fact that it’s about public participation; a critical step in getting the landfills shut down. It was a personal mission as both landfills are very close to houses, and the area has high cancer rates – this is what motivated us to start the campaign.

Too many people who go to the best schools, and get great grades, are confronted with a choice of trivial work that is very high paid, and has some sort of surface status, like senior partner in a law firm, or corporate executive, but most of the work can be done by anybody.

But if it did well, I’d remember what my parents told me, which was the hardest thing is not attaining success, it’s being able to endure it.

We used to converse at dinner time around the table. Parents and children. We talked about all kinds of issues. From local, neighborhood issues to world issues. It was back and forth, very lively, and very critical. During our early years my mother would relate historical sagas to us for five or ten minutes every lunch hour, when we would come home from school, and it would be continued the next day. I think that built into us a sense that freedom involves responsibility. It isn’t just waving flags and saying, “Look how free we are,” while people’s rights are being trampled sometimes overtly, sometimes beyond their control.