At 20, I realized that I could not possibly adjust to a feminine role as conceived by my father and asked him permission to engage in a professional career. In eight months I filled my gaps in Latin, Greek and mathematics, graduated from high school, and entered medical school in Turin.

Above all, don’t fear difficult moments. The best comes from them

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

My experience in childhood and adolescence of the subordinate role played by the female in a society run entirely by men had convinced me that I was not cut out to be a wife.

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

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

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.