“I was quite insistent. We have quite a few pranksters in the lab and I thought this was one of them. I even congratulated the man, ironically, on his Swedish accent.”

When he refused to believe the telephonic news about his Nobel Prize and accused his caller a poor hoaxer.
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan interview: 'It takes courage to tackle very hard problems in science

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I was quite insistent. We have quite a few pranksters in the lab and I thought this was one of them. I even congratulat…" by Venkatraman Ramakrishnan?
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan photo
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan 29
Nobel prize winning American and British structural biologi… 1952

Related quotes

Terry Pratchett photo

“I dare say that quite a few people have contemplated death for reasons that much later seemed to them to be quite minor.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Final lines of his Richard Dimbleby lecture Shaking Hands With Death on euthanasia and assisted suicide, quoted in "Terry Pratchett: my case for a euthanasia tribunal" in The Guardian (2 February 2010) http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/feb/02/terry-pratchett-assisted-suicide-tribunal
General sources
Context: I dare say that quite a few people have contemplated death for reasons that much later seemed to them to be quite minor. If we are to live in a world where a socially acceptable "early death" can be allowed, it must be allowed as a result of careful consideration.
Let us consider me as a test case. As I have said, I would like to die peacefully with Thomas Tallis on my iPod before the disease takes me over and I hope that will not be for quite some time to come, because if I knew that I could die at any time I wanted, then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.

Susan Kay photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Johannes Brahms photo

“On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.”

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) German composer and pianist

Discussion of the Chaconne in Bach's Partita for Violin #2. Litzman, Berthold (editor). "Letters of Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, 1853–1896". Hyperion Press, 1979, p. 16.

Boris Johnson photo

“I would like to thank first the vast multitudes who voted against me - and I have met quite a few in the last nine months, not all of them entirely polite.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

2000s, 2008, First Speech As London Mayor (May 3, 2008)

Nora Roberts photo
Elvis Presley photo

“I like Brando's acting … and James Dean … and Richard Widmark. Quite a few of 'em I like.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

When asked to name his favorite male actors, in "Elvis Exclusive Interview" with Ray Green in Little Rock, Arkansas (16 May 1956), as published in Elvis — Word for Word : What He Said, Exactly As He Said It (1999)

Rose Wilder Lane photo
Henry David Thoreau photo

“To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
Scott Carpenter photo

Related topics