Our lab had always refrained from keeping our studies secret.

It is a remarkable honor to receive a Nobel Prize, because it not only recognizes discoveries, but also their usefulness to the advancement of fundamental science.

The Department of Cell Biology at Johns Hopkins was founded and directed by Tom Pollard, an engaging young scientist with remarkable energy and enthusiasm.

My brother Jim and I spent many wonderful summers working on dairy farms in Wisconsin owned by Mom's cousins, and as members of our local Boy Scout troop.

My goal was to develop into an independent research scientist studying clinical problems at the laboratory bench, but I felt that postgraduate residency training in internal medicine was necessary.

We always had lutefisk for Christmas dinner, after which Dad read from the Norwegian Bible.

In 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, a bill opening one half million square miles of territory in the western United States for settlement.

Following my junior year in high school, I went on a camping trip through Russia in a group led by Horst Momber, a young language teacher from Roosevelt.

Our lab had always refrained from keeping our studies secret.

The long, cold Minnesota winters instilled in me a fascination for exotic far off places; I aspired toward a career in tropical diseases and world health problems.

Johns Hopkins introduced me to two defining events in my life: commitment to biomedical research and meeting my future wife, Mary.

Dad was a chemistry professor at Saint Olaf College in Minnesota, then Oxford College in Minnesota, and a very active member of the American Chemical Society education committee, where he sat on the committee with Linus Pauling, who had authored a very phenomenally important textbook of chemistry.

Every cell in our body is primarily water. But the water doesn't just sit in the cell, it moves through it in a very organized way. The process occurs rapidly in tissues that have these aquaporins or water channels.

I grew up in Minnesota. Four generations of my father's people are buried there.

In science, one should use all available resources to solve difficult problems. One of our most powerful resources is the insight of our colleagues.

Mother had to support herself at age 18 because it was during the depression and when my grandfather lost the farm and there was no place for her; she worked as an assistant to a maid.

Natural selection is not an inflammatory phrase; evolution is.

Now a cholera epidemic was sweeping through Southeast Asia and south Asia in the early 1970s, so I started medical school and I joined a laboratory to work on this.

Now in the 21st century, the boundaries separating chemistry, physics, and medicine have become blurred, and as happened during the Renaissance, scientists are following their curiosities even when they run beyond the formal limits of their training.

Often times the public school teachers are ridiculed or they are made to feel inferior but this is really undeserved.

So, my advice to young scientists is, think critically about your work; probably don't blab unnecessarily.

Until 1985, when my lab found the protein they are made of, aquaporins hadn't yet been identified. There had been a controversy in biology for more than 100 years about how water moved through cells.

Water is commonly regarded as the 'solvent of life,' since our bodies are 70% water. All other vertebrates, invertebrates, microbes, and plants are also primarily water. The organization of water within biological compartments is fundamental to life, and the aquaporins serve as the plumbing systems for cells.

Well, all life forms are dependent upon water.

Well, my take was people of Minnesota, these are good people. They're in many ways more generous than other parts of the country. They're better educated than other parts of the country.

While the lab plays an enormous role, research is also influenced by inner peace of mind and one's family environment, depending on what stage of one's life and career a scientist is at.

Written in 1895, Alfred Nobel's will endowed prizes for scientific research in chemistry, physics, and medicine. At that time, these fields were narrowly defined, and researchers were often classically trained in only one discipline. In the late 19th century, knowledge of science was not a requisite for success in other walks of life.

It is easier for women to succeed in business, the arts, and politics in America than in Europe.

Snakes are sometimes perceived as evil, but they are also perceived as medicine. If you look at an ambulance, there's the two snakes on the side of the ambulance. The caduceus, or the staff of Hermes, there's the two snakes going up it, which means that the venom can also be healing.

There are some great questions to ask your doctor. If he says 'no,' then you find yourself a different doctor. There really has to be a change in how we medically look at women at this time. I mean, this is not just baby gloom.

You know, I think anybody who has been in relationships has access to heartbreak - I don't think we have to go far to find it, whether we inflicted the heartbreak or whether we were the recipient of it.

Kinsey was trying to study sex scientifically, get rid of the overlay of culture and religion.

And when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment.

The most nurturing of directors can make you feel too comfortable, and you don't really push for that extra whatever.

We live in diverse communities with all sorts of people from all sorts of different backgrounds. The more our entertainment can be a reflection of the world we live in, the better it is for all of us.

With family dramas its hard to keep those stories alive.

Baalbek is so beautiful. It is the heart of beauty in the Middle East - I want to embrace these people with my music. I will try so hard for them. Their president is a Christian, their prime minister is a Muslim. Music is for everyone.

I've always had a very positive relationship with the municipal labor unions - a respectful relationship.

Dialing down is not an option for me.

I believe the world is incomprehensibly beautiful - an endless prospect of magic and wonder.

The roughest part of that lifestyle is the travel and early mornings.

Stem cells have the potential to be used to treat and better understand some of the world's most deadly and disabling diseases.

As with most liberal sexual ideas, what makes the world a better place for men invariably makes it a duller and more dangerous place for women.

Take it one pitch at a time. Take it one day at at time.

Never ever discount the idea of marriage. Sure, someone might tell you that marriage is just a piece of paper. Well, so is money, and what's more life-affirming than cold, hard cash?

When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling... our actions and lives are always the richer for it.

The human spirit was the strongest medicine on earth. And sometimes all it needed was a little encouragement to pull off a miracle.

I don't think I was all that late in becoming a father.

It's absolutely absurd to even consider voting on Sunday alcohol sales. I am opposed to alcohol period. It doesn't do anybody any good in the long run. It's a dangerous drug.