And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end

I think the U.K. is too small to write about from within it and still make it seem foreign and exotic and interesting.

One person looks around and sees a universe created by a god who watches over its long unfurling, marking the fall of sparrows and listening to the prayers of his finest creation. Another person believes that life, in all its baroque complexity, is a chemical aberration that will briefly decorate the surface of a ball of rock spinning somewhere among a billion galaxies. And the two of them could talk for hours and find no great difference between one another, for neither set of beliefs make us kinder or wiser.

Madness doesn't happen to someone alone. Very few people have experiences that are theirs alone.

..because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling.

... He had always rather liked emergencies. Other people's at any rate. They put your own problems into perspective. It was like being on a ferry. You didn't have to think about what you had to do or where you had to go for the next few hours. It was all laid out for you.

I was born too late for steam trains and a lazy eye meant I'd never be an astronaut.