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I was working as a secretary in Manchester and thought I would always do that. Then I got this letter offering me a two-year fellowship where I could write; they would pay me a salary and give me a flat to live in. It was heaven.

This funding from the National Endowment for the Arts has been like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

I was later to receive an excellent first two years' graduate education in the same University and then again was able to pursue my studies in the U.S. on a fellowship from the aforementioned fund.

I was an undergraduate at Princeton, and I was pressed by the math department to go on to graduate school. Actually they gave me fellowships that paid my way, otherwise I would not have been able to continue.

My first letter of acceptance, to UMass - Amherst, came with an offer of a fellowship and a note from John Edgar Wideman.

But Dr. Smith says, and I believe it to be a true state of the case, that he himself gave a course of Lectures in Natural Philosophy, during the same winter, and that the money raised by them was also applied towards paying for the Orrery.

If the (British) Arts Council give you money, they also tell you how to spend it.

If someone wants to give you, like, $100 million, it's hard to say no. But I don't want to accept that kind of money right now. I'd feel burdened by it.

The sort of thinking at the time was, 'Well, we're giving you access to medical care which you wouldn't otherwise be able to get, so your payment is that we get to use you in research.'