Even very low-probability events can, and indeed do, occur.

If you had to relive your life exactly as it was – same successes and failures, same happiness, same miseries, same mixture of comedy and tragedy – would you want to? Was it worth it?

When I read these books, I no longer felt like I was confined to a very tiny world. I no longer felt housebound and bedbound. Really, I told myself, I was just brainbound. And this was not such a sorry state of affairs. My brain, with a little help from other people's brains, could take me to some pretty interesting places, and create all kinds of wonderful things. Despite its faults, my brain, I decided, was not the worst place in the world to be.

Fear distorts the world. Fear sees demons where only shadows dwell.

Even very low-probability events can, and indeed do, occur.

In the long history of human affairs, common sense doesn’t have the greatest track record.

I knew how many zeroes there were in a quintillion, but I thought that algebra lived in ponds.