Randy Schekman Quotes

Our cells engage in protein production, and many of those proteins are enzymes responsible for the chemistry of life.

I am a scientist. Mine is a professional world that achieves great things for humanity.

Everything I did in high school was focused on microbiology, looking at things like algae under a microscope for hours on end. When I was 13, I saved up $100 to buy a good used microscope. I was obsessed with microorganisms.

I got into science because I thought that, with inspiration and hard work, I could figure out how life works.

It's actually a very unpleasant experience to read a Nature paper, or to read a Science paper.

I was driven completely by a desire to understand how cells worked.

The idea that I could push the envelope using dedication and research and endless curiosity has propelled me in my life's work.

The night before the Nobel announcement every year, I've gone to bed feeling quite anxious. I was optimistic, and also I knew it might never happen.

It is common, and encouraged by many journals, for research to be judged by the impact factor of the journal that publishes it. But as a journal's score is an average, it says little about the quality of any individual piece of research.

When I was a postdoc, I jotted every fresh thought on a three-by-five card and kept them in a card catalogue.