A Quote by Peter Carey

I thought I would be an organic chemist. I went off to university, and when I couldn't understand the chemistry lectures I decided that I would be a zoologist, because zoologists seemed like life-loving people.
Yes, from the time I was in junior high school I decided I wanted to be a chemist. I didn't quite know what a chemist was, but I kept it up and got my Ph.D. in physical chemistry.
Be a physical chemist, an analytical chemist, an organic chemist, if you will; but above all, be a chemist.
With psychedelics, if you're fortunate and break through, you understand what is truly of value in life. Material, power, dominance, and territory have no value. People wouldn't fight wars, and the whole system we have currently would fall apart. People would become peaceful, loving citizens, not robots marching around in the dark with all their lights off.
He's wearing his official university sweatshirt again, which puzzles me a little. I mean I'd sort of understand it more if it said Yale or Harvard or something, because then it would be a fashion choice. But why advertise the fact that you're at a university to all the other people who are at the university with you?
I would say that molecular gastronomy is a field of science. I would - I would say that it's probably lumped under chemistry, maybe. Because cooking, while it has certainly biology and some physics, it's mostly chemistry.
When you talk to young girls these days about their role modles, very few mention a chemist like Madame Curie or an astrophysicist and astronaut like Sally Ride, or a zoologist like Jane Goodall. Instead, they look to someone like Madonna.
I got the idea that to write books would be the best way to spend a life. I never thought of anything else that seemed like half as much fun, although in my next life I would like to be an architect, too, so I can have an easier time restoring houses.
Coming up with lectures is a huge amount of work. I was willing to do one lecture for Gresham because I was honored to have been invited, but to create lectures for a class would probably require that I shut down everything else and concentrate on lectures for a couple of years. Then there would be many, many other skills that I'd have to learn, such as how to sit through a faculty meeting, how to deal with students, etc. It is really not in the cards for me. It's not who I am or what I do. I'm a novelist.
I've often thought that if planners were botanists, zoologists, geologists, and people who know about the earth, we would have much more wisdom in such planning than we have when we leave it to the engineers.
When I turned 35, I thought, 'Mozart was dead at 36, so I set the bar: I'm going to start writing a book on my next birthday.' I thought historical fiction would be easiest because I was a university professor and know my way around a library, and it seemed easier to look things up than make them up.
An Oscar nomination? That would be a very satisfying thing, I'm sure. I would appreciate the thought. It would be like taking your hat off as an actor to all the people who walk through you.
People come to L.A. because they're chasing that dream of a better life. That's why I came here, because I thought it would be a place where I would find other people like me; people who wanted to write, people who had a dream of being something else. And that proved to be true.
There was a long time in my life where I made music that I thought my friends would like, or that I thought would get me a record deal, or what I thought I was supposed to make because that's what I was seeing in mainstream. I didn't know myself; I didn't find myself musically or, in real life.
When I went to university, I decided that I would like to do something related to plant ecology, because I felt that plants were so beautiful. When I am studying plants, I feel like I am talking with some kind of supernatural life, like I am talking with someone who does not speak.
It's such a measure of your solidarity with Ed, that when you would give lectures, he would be wearing a tartan tie that matched. And I demanded that outfit, I thought it was so punk - her long skirt, she looked like a Scottish queen, so regal.
I didn't make music until I was about 18. I'd been playing my whole life, but I wasn't putting it out because I didn't feel like people would take it seriously. I thought people would be like, 'It's just like sad girl music - it's like Taylor Swift.'
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