The instruments, glassware, and chemical reagents necessary for my project were the same as my 19th-century predecessors had.

I told Mother of my decision to study medicine. She encouraged me to speak to Father... I began in a roundabout way... He listened, looking at me with that serious and penetrating gaze of his that caused me such trepidation, and asked whether I knew what I wanted to do.

A child from the age of 2 or 3 absorbs what is in the environment and what generates hatred for anyone perceived to be different.

I should thank Mussolini for having declared me to be of an inferior race. This led me to the joy of working, not any more unfortunately, in university institutes but in a bedroom.

Babies did not attract me, and I was altogether without the maternal sense so highly developed in small and adolescent girls.

It is imperfection - not perfection - that is the end result of the program written into that formidably complex engine that is the human brain, and of the influences exerted upon us by the environment and whoever takes care of us during the long years of our physical, psychological and intellectual development.

If I had not been discriminated against or had not suffered persecution, I would never have received the Nobel Prize.