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How do you even choose what to mend when so much has already been destroyed? How could she think, she asked herself, that she could revive or save anything? (p152)

In the history of mathematics, the "how" always preceded the "why," the technique of the subject preceded its philosophy.

Rarely will you meet anyone so jealous as a teacher. Year after year students tumble along like the waters of a river. They flow away, and only the teacher is left behind, like some deeply buried rock at the bottom of the current. Although he may tell others of his hopes, he doesn't dream of them himself. He thinks of himself as worthless and either falls into masochistic loneliness or, failing that, ultimately becomes suspicious and pious, forever denouncing the eccentricities of others. He longs so much for freedom and action that he can only hate people.

he reminded himself of his own personal creed, that life was neither something you defended by hiding nor surrendered calmly on other people’s terms, but something you lived bravely, out in the open, and that if you had to lose it, you should also lose it on your own terms. (p201)

The progress of mathematics has been most erratic, and... intuition has played a predominant rôle in it. ...It was the function of intuition to create new forms; it was the acknowledged right of logic to accept or reject these new forms, in whose birth in had no part. ...the children had to live, so while waiting for logic to sanctify their existence, they throve and multiplied.

...she was like a starfish, that she constantly needed to have a piece of her break off and walk away in order for her to become something new. (p143)

Between the philosopher's attitude towards the issue of reality and that of the mathematician there is this essential difference: for the philosopher the issue is paramount; the mathematician's love for reality is purely platonic.

remember that love is like kerosene. The more you have, the more you burn. (p199)

I come from a place where breath, eyes, and memory are one, a place from which you carry your past like a hair on your head. Where women return to their children as butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to. (p234)

These were our bedtime stories. Tales that haunted our parents and made them laugh at the same time. We never understood them until we were fully grown and they became our sole inheritance. ("Caroline's Wedding")

I wish I could've done more for her, but some sorrows were simply too individual to share. (p252)

"Pretend that this is a time of miracles and we believe in them." ("A Wall of Fire Rising")