Nobel Prize

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen. The three of us (Mario Capecchi, Martin Evans and myself) thank the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet and the Nobel Foundation for honoring us today. And we thank our students and collaborators, whose help was indispensable in our research. But we also…

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honoured Laureates, Ladies and Gentlemen, One of the things that happen to people who get the Nobel Prize is that they get a lot of media attention. Many interviews. So many that I begin to feel now that I have lost the capacity for spontaneous thought. I…

Why do you write? This is the question I’ve been asked most often in my writing career. Most of the time they mean this: What is the point, why do you give your time to this strange and impossible activity? Why do you write … You have to give an excuse, an…

English Your Majesties Your Royal Highnesses Ladies and Gentlemen Dear Friends The trajectory that leads from a child tending cows in the valley to the Stockholm City Hall is a strange one. Here, too, (as is often the case), I am standing beside myself. It was only against my mother’s will that…

German Herta Müller’s speech at the Nobel Banquet, 10 December 2009 Eure Majestäten Eure Königlichen Hoheiten Meine Damen und Herren Liebe Freunde Der Bogen von einem Kind, das Kühe hütet im Tal bis hierher ins Rathaus von Stockholm ist bizarr. Ich stehe (wie so…

Brindis del Nobel Spanish Soy un contador de historias y, por lo tanto, antes de proponerles un brindis, voy a contarles una historia. Érase una vez un niño que a los cinco años aprendió a leer. Eso le cambió la vida. Gracias a los libros de aventuras…

Gabriel García Márquez’ speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1982 (in Spanish) Sus Majestades, Sus Altezas Reales, Amigos: Agradezco a la Academia de Letras de Suecia el que me haya distinguido con un premio que me coloca junto a muchos de quienes orientaron y enriquecieron mis años de lector y de cotidiano celebrante de…

Camilo José Cela’s speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1989 Your Majesties, Your Royal Highness, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Swedish Academy is honouring me by inscribing my name in the margins of the roll of illustrious personages of contemporary world literature. It is an honour which is out of all proportion to…

Wole Soyinka’s speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1986 Your Majesties, Ladies and Gentlemen, It was inevitable that the Nordic world and the African, especially that part of it which constitutes the Yoruba world – should meet at the crossroads of Sweden. That I am the agent of such a symbolic encounter is due…

Heinrich Böll’s speech at the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm, December 10, 1972 (in German) Herr Ministerpräsident, meine Damen und Herren, anlässlich eines Besuchs in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland hat Seine Majestät der König von Schweden einen gelehrten Blick in die Schichten der Vergänglichkeit getan, aus der wir kommen und auf der wir wohnen. Vielleicht hat der…