People's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive.

I am worrying about my country. I feel I have a responsibility as a novelist to do something.

Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that.

Things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours. It's like taking a boat out on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the lake are beautiful. So stop eating yourself up alive. Things will go where they're supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course.

If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen.

Math is like water. It has a lot of difficult theories, of course, but its basic logic is very simple. Just as water flows from high to low over the shortest possible distance, figures can only flow in one direction. You just have to keep your eye on them for the route to reveal itself. That’s all it takes. You don’t have to do a thing. Just concentrate your attention and keep your eyes open, and the figures make everything clear to you. In this whole, wide world, the only thing that treats me so kindly is math.

Once thing goes wrong, then the whole house of cards collapses. And there's no way you can extricate yourself. Until someone comes along to drag you out.