“In the cold and snow-rich Silesian winters, there were hour-long rides...” — Gunter Blobel Quote

“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.”

“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.”

“Every afternoon, I shut the door of my bedroom to write: Poetry was secret, dangerous, wicked and delicious.”

“When I was 14, I told my mother I intended to be in the House of Commons in the morning, in court in the afternoon and on stage in the evening. She realised then a fantasist had been born.”

“One afternoon, on my way to the campus - I was majoring in political science at Nairobi University - a photographer by the name of Peter Beard stopped me in the street and asked me if I'd ever been photographed.”