The Empire of Ice Cream

Quotes

1. Halloween was close, our favorite holiday because it carried none of the pain-in-the-ass holiness of Christmas and still there was free candy.

   p. 160

2. 

   Parents—so essential yet sometimes like something you have stepped in and cannot get off your shoe. What else is there but to love them?

   p. 56

3. 

   Now I was stuck and could feel the tide of years suddenly beginning to rise around me.

   p. 307

4. 

   My hero was J. S. Bach. It was from his works that I came to understand mathematics and, through a greater understanding of math, came to a greater understanding of Bach—the golden ratio, the rise of complexity through the reiteration of simple elements, the presence of the cosmic in the common.

   p. 58

5. 

   Nothing is more comforting to people than to have their certainties trumpeted back to them in bold, clear typeface.

   p. 291

6. 

   “Can you think of anything, my dear Mr. Fell, more intricately complex, more perfectly compact and thoroughly functional than the human eye?”

   “No, sir,” said August.

   “I thought not,” said Larchcroft. “Consider this, though. Our eyes were created by light. Without the existence of light, we would not have eyes. Over the long course of man’s evolutionarily maturation to his modern condition, light sculpted these magical orbs, making subtle adjustments through the centuries, until now they are capable of the incredible process of sight. This most vital sense, not only a means of self-preservation but the single most important catalyst for culture, is a product of the inherent genius of light.”

   p. 190

7. 

   The wind and sun, the salt water, the hard work aged a body rapidly, and when I would look at the old man who clammed, I was too young to sense the wisdom their years on the water had bestowed upon them and saw only what I did not want to become.

   p. 307

That’s all the quotes.

7 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more