I used to be surprised and even depressed when I met someone I had admired and discovered him or her to be a jerk or, perhaps worse, rather common. Now I half expect this reaction and even find it a little reassuring, maybe even uplifting. Isn't it amazing that somebody like that could produce such and such.

The fashion pages have always baffled me. In my opinion, the articles appear to be full of gobbledygook as to make the astrology column seem factual by comparison.

The once-surprising existence of non-Euclidean models of Euclid's first four axioms can be seen as a sort of mathematical joke.

In listening to stories we tend to suspend disbelief in order to be entertained, whereas in evaluating statistics we generally have an opposite inclination to suspend belief in order not to be beguiled.

We ourselves are co-called non-linear dynamical systems... I don't feel quite so pathetic when I interrupt a project to check on some obscure web site or newsgroup or derive an iota of cheer by getting rid of pocketful of change.

Mathematicians are a bit like the laconic Vermonter who, when asked if he's lived in the state his whole life, replies, "Not yet."

Mathematics is no more computation than typing is literature.