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

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.

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?

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.