Elizabeth Moon Quotes

I knew at university that medicine was just not for me. I saved many lives by not being a doctor!

It was just expected that I would go to college. Both my parents are teachers and they tolerated acting, but I was going to go to a school of quality or bust. Which made my downshifting back to acting afterward a little difficult.

My father was the child of academics and was probably destined to become an academic himself but vetoed that idea. Bailed, dropped out of graduate school and just went to work for an insurance company. But the house was full of books and music and all of that.

As an instructor at Alexandria University, I did research that was published in international journals. Although I left to pursue a doctorate in the United States, it was not for want of a good life.

My father was a lawyer and to my best knowledge nobody in my family before had interest in science.

I went to medical school after having decided to do so somewhere between my junior and senior year at Harvard - very late. I initially wanted to be an intellectual historian.

I'm not saying that I won't tour again, but the chances are slim because my priorities are different now.

Certainly by the time I was in seventh grade, I knew I had to have a long education if I wanted to become an astronomer, but I figured I'd try it, and if I didn't get far enough, I could always end up teaching in high school or math or physics.

You think you want to be an astronaut, and then after a while you're a geo-major for whatever reason. That's just the way it is in college.

My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one of us could have gone either way.

I flunked my exam for university two times before I was accepted by what was considered my city's worst university, Hangzhou Teachers University. I was studying to be a high school English teacher. In my university, I was elected student chairman and later became chairman of the city's Students Federation.

I went to the University of Washington in Seattle. This was a very good place to study, and I learned a lot. But it wasn't the right place for my Ph.D.

The family's dream was to see me receive a high degree abroad and to return to become a university professor - on the door to my study room, a sign was placed reading 'Dr. Ahmed,' even though I was still far from becoming a doctor.

Johns Hopkins introduced me to two defining events in my life: commitment to biomedical research and meeting my future wife, Mary.

I loved history in my school days, and I have always been a voracious reader. But in India, you end up doing MBA, engineering or medicine.

That's the great thing about university: you've got people around you who are taking a risk and trying things out themselves. It gives you the confidence to try and take it to the next step, which was drama school.

I never made a career decision based solely on my desire to be an astronaut. I attended the Naval Academy because I wanted to be a Navy pilot. I majored in math because math had always come pretty easily to me and I liked it.

I didn't go to Ivy League schools. I dropped out of college to go into movies.

I went to Carnegie Mellon and was an electrical engineer, but electrical engineering wasn't right for me.

I have a B.S. in Biology from MIT, an M.Sc. in Human Biology and a Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology from Oxford University, and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School. I never intended for so many degrees, but I enjoyed getting them all.

There were various turning points, but the main one at the beginning was that I was going off to do another degree in the history of art. I would have ended up as some art historian at Sotheby's or something.

Being working class, my parents thought, 'Ian's going to uni, the first in the family,' and I'd do dentistry or accountancy. I was going to do accountancy; then I got a C in Economics and thought, 'Why am I doing this?' The only thing I was interested in was books and literature.

Following Rice, I went to Caltech for a Ph.D in physics, without any strong idea of what I wanted to do for a thesis topic.

I was pre-med for a semester, and then I got a C- in organic chemistry and was washed out of that program. Then I imagined I'd be a lawyer. I was gonna go to law school.

To me it was fascinating, the idea of going to university and studying a subject - architecture - that I had already faced in building some small houses.