15 Quotes by Gunter Blobel

I was 8 years old in the spring of 1945 when my family fled Silesia to escape the Russian army. On our way, we passed through Dresden. A few days later, it was firebombed. The fire was so bright that night that one could read a newspaper from the light, though we were many kilometers away.

I'm always telling my students that if they can't explain what they are doing, to their grandmothers, then they probably don't understand it themselves.

In 1936, when I was born in the small Silesian village of Waltersdorf in the county of Sprottau in the then-eastern part of Germany, now part of Poland, the fine structure of the cell was still an enigma.

In the cold and snow-rich Silesian winters, there were hour-long rides on Sundays in horse-drawn sleighs to my maternal grandparent's farm to have lunch and to spend the afternoon. The house was a magnificent 18th-century manor house in the nearby Altgabel with a great hall that was decorated with hunting trophies.

It was one of the great pleasures of my life to donate the entire sum of the Nobel Prize, in memory of my sister Ruth Blobel, to the restoration of Dresden.

The tremendous acquisition of basic knowledge will allow a much more rational treatment of cancer, viral infections, degenerative diseases and, most importantly, mental diseases.