Everyone thinks I must have been an ace in school. But I didn't work hard, I was lazy. I liked to be lazy. I thought laziness stimulated your imagination.

Successful women are not liked. I think the biggest danger for women in science is colleagues who are not as good as you are.

Not everybody is talented for doing research. I think many women prefer to look for an easier job after their dissertations because it is very demanding. You have to be mobile. You have to move to different places for your post-doc training. And if you aren't successful, it isn't a very pleasant job, either.

I think women who are pretty certainly have an advantage in any field, in any profession. When a girl is born people still say: Oh, I'm glad that she is pretty. They don't look at whether she is intelligent.

I was raised with this idea of hard work and keeping doors open. To be able to choose what you want to do in the future. That was what we tried to tell our children, too.

I know labs where women refuse to make a coffee for others because they don't want to be seen doing seemingly female things. I think this is stupid. Why not make a coffee, bring a cake? I do it.

The pressure on kids is high to get good grades. In my time, no one cared about it. My father looked at them but he didn't really make much fuss about them.