To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client.

And there was, in those Ipswich years, for me at least, a raw educational component; though I used to score well in academic tests, I seemed to know very little of how the world worked and was truly grateful for instruction, whether it was how to stroke a backhand, mix a martini, use a wallpaper steamer, or do the Twist. My wife, too, seemed willing to learn. Old as we must have looked to our children, we were still taking lessons, in how to be grown-up.

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...'

It's not up to us what we learn, but merely whether we learn through joy or through pain.

The worst thing in the world is a bitter woman. That's one thing about your mother, she's never been bitter.

You always find things you didn't know you were going to say, and that is the adventure.

Women are an alien race set down among us.