I thought of the infinitely many points that can divide the space between two human hearts.

The human brain is like a memory system that records every thing that happens to us and makes intelligent predictions based on those experiences.

Like works of literature, mathematical ideas help expand our circle of empathy, liberating us from the tyranny of a single, parochial point of view. Numbers, properly considered, make us better people.

Often autism is portrayed in the media as a very negative condition, as something that prevents somebody from communicating or from socializing or from being able to have any kind of normal, happy life.

37 is a lumpy number, a bit like porridge. Six is very small and dark and cold, and whenever I was little trying to understand what sadness is I would imagine myself inside a number six and having that experience of cold and darkness. Similarly, number four is a shy number.

I remember as a young child, during one of my frequent trips to the local library, spending hours looking at book after book trying in vain to find one that had my name on it. Because there were so many books in the library, with so many different names on them, I’d assumed that one of them — somewhere — had to be mine. I didn’t understand at the time that a person’s name appears on a book because he or she wrote it. Now that I’m twenty-six I know better. If I were ever going to find my book one day, I was going to have to write it.

We will always have more to discover, more to invent, more to understand and that's much closer to art and literature than any science.