What is the part of your job that people would be surprised is most of your job?

Although my years at Irvine were very productive, I missed not doing experiments myself because of the many responsibilities associated with a faculty position: teaching courses, supervising graduate students, meetings, etc. After spending seven years at Irvine as Assistant and then Associate Professor, I decided to move to a non-academic position. I joined the Molecular Physics and Chemistry Section at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1982. I had a smaller group – only a few postdoctoral fellows – but I also had the luxury of conducting experiments with my own hands, which I enjoyed very much.

I decided that my attention would be in the dining room. I haven’t cooked in 28 years at Chez Panisse. ... I didn’t intend to be out of the kitchen. ... Now I’m in a different world and I contribute to the collaboration of the kitchen and I’m always working with a group of colleagues who inspire me, but I really miss being actually in the solving of the performance, that effort to really come up with dishes that are delicious and right.

I’ve been emphasising here the small and the private, because essentially that’s what my work is about. One person writing in a quiet room, trying to connect with another person, reading in another quiet – or maybe not so quiet – room. Stories can entertain, sometimes teach or argue a point. But for me the essential thing is that they communicate feelings. That they appeal to what we share as human beings across our borders and divides. There are large glamorous industries around stories; the book industry, the movie industry, the television industry, the theatre industry. But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it also feel this way to you?

When another baby arrived, I realized that the problem could not be solved in the operating room, but that we had to combat the root causes of these atrocities. I decided to travel to the village of Kavumu to talk to the men: why don't you protect your babies, your daughters, your wives? And where are the authorities?

One cannot overemphasize the importance of observation and a full assessment — the failure to do so leads to some of the greatest mistakes, not only in war but also in business and government. A full assessment is critical. To properly manage any business situation, you need to perform a full and complete assessment of it. In business, you have to understand your competitors, their distribution, their economics, their innovations, and their strengths and weaknesses. You also need to understand customers and their changing preferences, along with your own costs, your people and their skills.