Phyllis explained to him, trying to give of her deeper self, 'Don't you find it so beautiful, math? Like an endless sheet of gold chains, each link locked into the one before it, the theorems and functions, one thing making the next inevitable. It's music, hanging there in the middle of space, meaning nothing but itself, and so moving...'

Affairs, ... , like everything else, ask too much.

Many men are more faithful to their golf partners than to their wives and have stuck with them longer.

I must go to Nature disarmed of perspective and stretch myself like a large transparent canvas upon her in the hope that, my submission being perfect, the imprint of a beautiful and useful truth would be taken.

Wickedness was like food: once you got started it was hard to stop; the gut expanded to take in more and more.

As souls must cry when they awaken in tiny babies and find themselves far from heaven

Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could teach myself.