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“The truly correct proof is one that strikes a harmonious balance between strength and flexibility.
“A problem has a rhythm of its own, just like a piece of music,” the Professor said. “Once you get the rhythm, you get the sense of the problem as a whole, and you can see where the traps might be waiting.”
He was no longer a frail old man, nor a scholar lost in his thoughts, but the rightful protector of a child. Their profiles seemed to come together, superimposed on one another, forming a single line. The gentle patter of the rain was punctuated by the scratching of pencil on paper.
there was no shame in admitting you didn’t have the answer, it was a necessary step toward the truth.
In these pages, the Professor had walked beyond beaten paths, looking for truth in a place no one knows.
The evening sky seemed so close you could touch it, and at that moment, as if they had been awaiting our arrival, the lights came on. The stadium looked like a spaceship descended from the heavens.
It’s the young who have to break the old records. That’s the way the world works,
“Math has proven the existence of God, because it is absolute and without contradiction; but the devil must exist as well, because we cannot prove it.”
“Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won’t find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human emotions. Mathematics, however, can illuminate them, can give them expression—in fact, nothing can prevent it from doing so.”
He treated Root exactly as he treated prime numbers. For him, primes were the base on which all other natural numbers relied; and children were the foundation of everything worthwhile in the adult world.
No one gets the best spot all the time—they have to compromise.”
“Someone once wrote that worrying is the hardest thing about being a parent.”
Despite what the Greeks might have thought, zero doesn’t disturb the rules of calculation; on the contrary, it brings greater order to them.
