Learning to listen, letting people finish their sentences, and most of all, the habit of noticing the difference between what people say and how they say it. {on the habits of psychoanalytic training and practice applied to fiction writing} The gap between what people tell you and what's really going on is what interests me.
Today most funding for science comes through government. That means that you have to be known to be sympathetic to conclusions that are acceptable to the political classes.