The theory of probability is the only mathematical tool available to help map the unknown and the uncontrollable. It is fortunate that this tool, while tricky, is extraordinarily powerful and convenient.

I spent half my life, roughly speaking, doing the study of nature in many aspects and half of my life studying completely artificial shapes. And the two are extraordinarily close; in one way both are fractal.

Being a language, mathematics may be used not only to inform but also, among other things, to seduce.

Think of color, pitch, loudness, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics

For much of my life there was no place where the things I wanted to investigate were of interest to anyone.

A cloud is made of billows upon billows upon billows that look like clouds. As you come closer to a cloud you don't get something smooth, but irregularities at a smaller scale.

Smooth shapes are very rare in the wild but extremely important in the ivory tower and the factory.