“A union of literary and scientific culturesthere was not the dissociation of sensibility that was so soon to come... Davy himself was writing (and sometimes publishing) a good deal of poetry at the...”

“And I often dream of chemistry at night, dreams that conflate the past and the present, the grid of the periodic table transformed to the grid of Manhattan. [] Sometimes, too, I dream of the indeci...”

“I was on the shy side at school (one school report called me diffident) and Braefield had added a special timidity, but when I had a natural wonder... I lost all my diffidence, and freely approache...”

“[photography]... wanted to understand, to master for myself, all the processes involved, and to manipulate them in my own way.”

“My mother showed me that when tin or zinc was bent it uttered a special cry. Its due to deformation of the crystal structure, she said, forgetting that I was five, and could not understand her - an...”

“I liked numbers because they were solid, invariant; they stood unmoved in a chaotic world. There was in numbers and their relation something absolute, certain, not to be questioned, beyond doubt.”

“But who can remember pain, once its over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In lif...”

“My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it's operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely ...”