Carbon nanotubes are amazing because they're really good electrical conductors, yet they are only a few atoms in diameter. You can make transistors out of them in the same way you can with silicon. At Berkeley, we made the narrowest device anybody had ever made. It was basically a single molecule.

The very first time I was on a car in Atlanta, I saw the conductor - all conductors are white - ask a Negro woman to get up and take a seat farther back in order to make a place for a white man. I have also seen white men requested to leave the Negro section of the car.

Catalysts are the conductors who choreograph the chemical dance that results in the formation of new structures.

They gave me four weeks, and I asked if the first week could be just music with the two main conductors. So, the conductors came over to my home, and we worked in the music room, and I learned my two little songs.

Nobody would comment on what clothes male conductors wear. Or if they kind of put on some weight or something like that, and maybe their jacket is a little bit too tight. But if that happens to me as a female, then that's immediately pointed out.

Firstly, I think that now there are many young female conductors, but as it takes at least thirty years for a conductor to 'ripen/mature,' we'll only see them in 'top conductors statistics' in some decades.

I look at composers and conductors, anybody involved in music or writing or art in general; they got more done as they got older. If I can, I'll be one of those people because what I do is my passion.

Conductors start getting good when everybody else retires.