‘The deadline for this piece was Christmas Eve, but that was also the deadline for buying presents for the family. So — while making hurried purchases through multiple windows on my computer — I also wrote the following…’
'I am typing with two thumbs in the early morning; still in bed, half immersed in a hypnagogic state. As a mother of two, lie-ins no longer exist. Right now, I can hear my deadline running towards me, in the form of my three year old child.'
'A friend at Caltech asks, are you a dilettante? It stings, and you keep thinking: am I? Well, I can tell you; you are not. You are very focussed, very single minded, just not on PhD research.'