Quotes from Donna Strickland

Gérard Mourou, who was my PhD supervisor, dreamed up the idea of increasing laser intensity by orders of magnitude. He did it while he was on a ski trip with his family. He probably shouldn't have been thinking about lasers.

I mean, so hopefully soon there's enough women and enough people of colour and enough of every group out there that feels that they get the recognition they deserve, and then we don't have to talk about it anymore.

I feel unbelievably honored to be, you know, with Marie Curie and Goeppert Mayer. It's like, how can I be in the same breath as those three?

What the ultrafast laser does is that because it doesn't have to just cut from the surface, it's only at the intense focal point that it does this damage where the electrons come off the atoms, you could actually put your laser and scan it over your cornea and it would cut underneath that.

It is understandable that people want to know how it affects them. But as a scientist, I would hope society would be equally interested in fundamental science.

I have great faith in lasers, but no one's putting one near my eye.

There's no point in me being something other than me.

I got paid the same as my male counterpart grad students and onward.

I was very good at math and physics. And that's all. I can't do music, art, so there was not a lot of choice for me. I think people should go with their strength and that was my strength.