A Munich ritual: no matter how sleepless I feel on the first day, I go to the Alte Pinakothek, perhaps my favorite museum, and revisit familiar sights one by one. Today I walked down slowly down the great central corridor, attempting to minimize the noise that my boots made on the wood floor and keeping my eyes fixed on Dürer's "Four Apostles" at the far end. The museum felt like a vast theater created for this one fearfully potent painting, and it held the stage.
I came to Munich to accept the Belmont Prize, an unexpected and extraordinary honor. At the ceremony, I thought it appropriate to risk humiliation and say something in my exceedingly poor German: "Dieser Preis ist die großte Ehre meines Lebens. Meine Dankbarkeit ist ewig und unendlich."
