In those days, in Far Rockaway, there was a youth center for Jewish kids at the temple.... Somebody nominated me for president of the youth center. The elders began getting nervous, because I was an avowed atheist by that time.... I thought nature itself was so interesting that I didn't want it distorted like that. And so I gradually came to disbelieve the whole religion.

I don't feel frightened by not knowing things.

What did you ASK at school today?

I have to disregard everybody else, and then I can do my own work.

All the time you're saying to yourself, 'I could do that, but I won't,'--which is just another way of saying that you can't.

I'm smart enough to know that I'm dumb.

You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing.