When they called me with the Nobel call from Secretary General of the Swedish Academy it was twenty minutes to six and he said well that was well hope I'm not disturbing you but I am the Secretary General of the Swedish Academy. Of course you can imagine I was frozen in time when he said that but then he made a very famous statement, something to the effect that this is the last 20 minutes of peace of your life.

Scientists contribute in a variety of ways and I don't think I can singular one even including [Albert] Einstein, that I can say that he's the best. We don't work like the best basketball player and the best musician and so on. Science is a collective effort.

I came from Egypt and I owe Egypt a lot to what I am now.

I do feel that there are tremendous amount of talent in Egypt, human resources.

I don't know all the reasons for these achievements, but I know that I love what I do and I have never wanted to rest on my laurels.

Think about the whole world of biological complex sciences. We still don't understand the way a protein folds the way it does.

Perhaps the most valuable thing he taught me (his father) was that there is no contradiction between devotion to work and enjoyment of life and people