Here is a nice writeup of a meeting with the math genius Alexandre Grothendieck:
When he seemed totally unmoved by my getting out the bakery box from my bag and told me again to leave, I returned to the gate.
I explained that I had climbed the gate to get in, but when he didn’t react at all, I thought (nonsensically, I now realize) that he wanted me to climb back over the gate to prove to him that this was indeed how I entered his yard. But, the ground under the gate was sloped so that the fence was significantly higher from the inside, and I was shaking from the huge influx of adrenaline that I was experiencing. After a few horribly embarrassing failed attempts at pushing myself back over the gate, during which all I could think, over and over, was “Alexander Grothendieck is watching me” (which he was, with what I might describe, in retrospect, as detached bemusement), I asked him to unlock the gate.
However, he stood totally still and silent, like my own personal Ghost of Christmas Future, and then told me, once more, to get out. I thought I had better not fail at this next attempt. I tossed my bag, hat, and scarf over, did a bit of a run up, and vaulted inelegantly over, smacking my shin hard on the gate on the way. Seeing the bruise later helped me convince myself that I had not dreamed up this entire episode.
Once he had seen me leave his yard, I thought that Grothendieck might just walk off, but I decided to wait. He did as well, and we studied each other from opposite sides of the gate for a moment. We were a similar height, and his blue eyes were alert and focused.
Grothendieck asked me not angrily, but a bit sternly, in French, how I knew his address and how I had gotten there. He told me again that I should not have come in, and should not have disturbed him in his “cloˆıtre”, which reinforced the impression given by the brown robe he wore that he thought of himself, in some sense, as a monk.
When I was given the address, I had said I wouldn’t tell Grothendieck how I came by it, so I just watched him silently during this monologue, looking shocked.
More here:
https://webusers.imj-prg.fr/~leila.schneps/grothendieckcircle/Katrina.pdf