“If this is a lecture and the lecturer writes down one thing and you take down something else, how are you going to pass your exams?”

“In lectures, it is important that you lecture plain. We are interested in the smartest students, and we really should take care of those who have most difficulties with understanding certain concepts. I try to balance it. You know what? In lecturing, Jerzy Vetulani really helped me – listening to his lectures, I learned how to teach correctly, so that the students did not fall asleep after fifteen minutes.”

“Use original detail in your writing. Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else.”

“I know that if I'd had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn't have got anywhere. You don't take exams for acting, you take your courage.”

“You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.”

“There are alway going to be bad things. But you can write it down and make a song out of it.”

“Finish this lecture, go outside, and unexpectedly get gored by an elephant, and you are going to secrete glucocorticoids. There's no way out of it. You cannot psychologically reframe your experience and decide you did not like the shirt, here's an excuse to throw it out — that sort of thing.”

“In lectures, it is important that you lecture simply. We are interested in the smartest students, and we really should take care of those who have most difficulties to understand certain concepts. I try to balance it.”

“When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.”

“Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.”