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.

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.

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.

I might have liked to have done it a couple of years later, but you'd be stupid to turn it down.

I was at the Royal College in 1977 and invited to exhibit in the Queen’s Jubilee exhibition. I was over the moon. I’ve had a lucky life. I pinch myself regularly. But every time a work turns out that I feel excited about, that’s the real reward.

Homegoing spans about 250 years of Ghanaian and American history. Some of this history I knew a bit about, but the novel did require an extensive amount of research, which was by far the most difficult part in the process of writing.

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.

Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty. No kind of life is worth leading if it is always an easy life. I know that your life is hard; I know that your work is hard; and hardest of all for those of you who have the highest trained consciences, and who therefore always feel how much you ought to do. I know your work is hard, and that is why I congratulate you with all my heart. I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life; I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.

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

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 would like my architecture to inspire people to use their own resources, to move into the future.

Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.