No one really starts anything new, Mrs. Nemur. Everyone builds on other men's failures. There is nothing really original in science. What each man contributes to the sum of knowledge is what counts.

How can I make him understand that he did not create me? He makes the same mistake as the others when they look at a feeble-minded person and laugh because they don't understand there are human feelings involved.

I’m “exceptional”- a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of “gifted” and “deprived” (which used to mean “bright” and “retarded”) and as soon as “exceptional” begins to mean anything to anyone they’ll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression as long as it doesn’t mean anything to anybody. “Exceptional” refers to both ends of the spectrum, so all my life I’ve been exceptional.

No one really starts anything new, Mrs. Nemur. Everyone builds on other men's failures. There is nothing really original in science. What each man contributes to the sum of knowledge is what counts.

I'm not close to him." He looked at me defiantly. "But he's put his whole life into this. He's no Freud or Jung or Pavlov or Watson, but he's doing something important and I respect his dedication - maybe even more because he's just an ordinary man trying to do a great man's work, while the great men are all busy making bombs.

Even in the world of make-believe there have to be rules. The parts have to be consistent and belong together.

I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.