The same skills that I used as a welder, as a migrant farm worker, are similar skills that I'm using as a brain surgeon.

If you look at some of the clips of me in the operating room, I sit in the chair, I control the microscope with my mouth, I connect, my hands are always working in the brain, my feet are controlling everything.

Doesn't matter how menial may be the job that you're doing today. If you have dreams, that will turn into something positive in the future.

The greatest gratification that I get to work with these hands is that when I come out and I go to the waiting room and speak and talk to the families of my patients, I get standing ovations and I get tears and they look at me as superhuman and superhero. No amount of money, no amount of anything can ever compare to that feeling.

You have to have passion for everything you do, and you've got to look at the positive side.

As a researcher at US Berkeley I used to go into the brains of small, little animals and study the way that brains were connected and how little did I know that one day that was going to be my future - exploring the universe of the brain and hold it in between my hands and look at cells migrating.

I'm not a politician, I'm not an economist. I'm just a simple Brian surgeon and a scientist who's trying to do my best every day.