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Prodigies learn; geniuses do. The vast majority of child prodigies don’t become adult geniuses.
He thought of Democritus: “Everywhere man blames nature and fate, yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passions, his mistakes and weaknesses.”
“You don’t need a girlfriend, Colin. You need a robot who says nothing but ‘I love you.’
occurred to Colin that the kiss didn’t feel nearly as good as the sound of her asking if she could be his girlfriend.
In the first century CE, Roman authorities punished St. Apollonia by crushing her teeth one by one with pliers. Colin often thought about this in relationship to the monotony of dumping: we have thirty-two teeth. After a while, having each tooth individually destroyed probably gets repetitive, even dull. But it never stops hurting.
The future will erase everything—there’s no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend oblivion.
Colin’s skin was alive with the feeling of connection to everyone in that car and everyone not in it. And he was feeling not-unique in the very best possible way.
