The Woman Who Smashed Codes

by Jason Fagone

This skill for mimicry, combined with his innate abilities as a salesman, made Fabyan seem like a credible prophet of science even when he was talking about things that science said were impossible.

Humans are so good at seeing patterns that we are often able to see patterns even when they aren’t really there.

He enjoyed science because it was an interesting way of being alive.

It made them feel, as all good books do, less alone.

the Friedmans built an archive because that’s what the best intelligence professionals do. They become librarians.

to really live a life in search of knowledge, you must admit when you are wrong.

as much as intelligence seems to be about knowing things, about gaining power through knowledge, it is just as much about not knowing them, or getting them wrong, or seeing other people get them wrong, and having to go on living with the uncertainty, with the not knowing, and thinking about what might have been.

Elizebeth didn’t think there was any pattern to death. It was random and cruel.

the birth of a science: It begins on the day when a twenty-three-year-old American woman decides to trust her doubt and dig with her own mind.