The world operates by number, by physical laws, expressed mathematically. If you know these, you will have a better grasp of things. And some possible job skills.

The vaunted experience of age was perhaps only a matter of wounds and scarring -- that young minds to old minds might be as young bodies to old bodies: stronger, more vital, less twisted by damage.

It is always the teacher who must learn the most... or else nothing real has happened in the exchange.

The Quran says nothing about the veil, except for an injunction to veil the bosom, which is obvious. As for the face, Muhammad's wife Khadijeh never wore the veil, nor did the other wives of the Prophet after Khadijeh died. [...] The ulema have twisted the Quran with their hadith, always twisting it toward those in power, until the message Muhammad laid out so clearly, straight from God, has been reversed, and good Muslim women are made like slaves again, or worse.

Science was many things, Nadia thought, including a weapon with which to hit other scientists.

Childhood isn't just those years. It's also the opinions you form about them afterward. That's why our childhoods are so long.

It was that sort of sleep in which you wake every hour and think to yourself that you have not been sleeping at all; you can remember dreams that are like reflections, daytime thinking slightly warped.