On hearing the news [of being awarded a Nobel Prize], a friend who knows me only too well, sent me this laconic message: 'Blood, toil, sweat and tears always were a good mixture'.

I saw Linus Pauling as a brilliant lecturer and a man with a fantastic memory, and a great, great showman. I think he was the century's greatest chemist. No doubt about it.

What is known for certain is dull.

Discoveries cannot be planned, they pop up, like Puck, in unexpected corners

Could the search for ultimate truth really have revealed so hideous and visceral looking an object?

I rarely plan my research; it plans me.

People are best judged by their actions

Women's liberation could have not succeeded if science had not provided them with contraception and household technology.

But Charlie could imagine, because he was a Beta Male, and imagination was his curse....

Lust and the English make no sense to me.

It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble, how hopeless the outlook how muddled the tangle, how great the mistake. A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all.

Perhaps only when people can enjoy their differences as a resource of cultural enrichment do they become truly civilized.

With leadership the question at the beginning of the day is, 'how far can we take this...how big can we grow it...and how fast can we get there?'

When I was a little girl in the 1950s, it would not have been possible for me to say, I want to be an anchorwoman when I grow up.

Hollywood is about playing the game, and I can't think of any successful actresses who didn't play the game. There's a lot more renegades in the music business, from Patti Smith to Janis Joplin.

And a building must be like a human being. It must have a wholeness about it, something that is very important.

But you have to give your whole life to a cello. When I realized that, I went back to the guitar and just turned the volume up a bit louder.

Just the type of music that was around at the same time as I was writing. Some of it was wicked, definitely. But there was just one direction which I thought could be pushed that no one was pushing.