“People tend to think that mathematicians always work in sterile conditions, sitting around and staring at the screen of a computer, or at a ceiling, in a pristine office. But in fact, some of the best ideas come when you least expect them, possibly through annoying industrial noise.”

Source: Love and Math, 2013, p. 145

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "People tend to think that mathematicians always work in sterile conditions, sitting around and staring at the screen of…" by Edward Frenkel?
Edward Frenkel photo
Edward Frenkel 5
mathematician working in representation theory, algebraic g… 1968

Related quotes

Ben Croshaw photo
Antonio Negri photo
Rick Riordan photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Heath Ledger photo

“Some days you go to your office and you're the only one who shows up, none of the characters show up, and you sit there by yourself, feeling like an idiot. And some days everybody shows up ready to work. You have to show up at your office every day. If an idea comes by, you want to be there to get it in.”

Thomas Harris (1940) American author and screenwriter

Hannibal Lecter’s Creator Cooks Up Something New (No Fava Beans or Chianti) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/18/books/thomas-harris-new-book.html (May 18, 2019)

Madeleine Stowe photo

“I'm not saying that the movies created these situations, because there are a whole bunch of things.
But a lot of people in the movie industry tend to run and hide from it like ostriches. Movie industry people are definitely in denial right now, but you do become de-sensitized to violence when you see it on the screen so often.”

Madeleine Stowe (1958) American actress

On violence in movies inspiring real-life violence, as quoted in Jam Showbiz (6 June 1999) http://jam.canoe.ca/Movies/Artists/S/Stowe_Madeleine/1999/06/06/762059.html
Context: I am really astonished at the number of violent acts.
I'm not saying that the movies created these situations, because there are a whole bunch of things.
But a lot of people in the movie industry tend to run and hide from it like ostriches. Movie industry people are definitely in denial right now, but you do become de-sensitized to violence when you see it on the screen so often.
Let's face it, violence exists for one reason in movies, and that's to get an effect, create an emotion, sell tickets.

Philip Roth photo

“Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

Paris Review Interview (1986)
Context: You ask if I thought my fiction had changed anything in the culture and the answer is no. Sure, there's been some scandal, but people are scandalized all the time; it's a way of life for them. It doesn't mean a thing. If you ask if I want my fiction to change anything in the culture, the answer is still no. What I want is to possess my readers while they are reading my book — if I can, to possess them in ways that other writers don't. Then let them return, just as they were, to a world where everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt, and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise, to have set loose in them the consciousness that's otherwise conditioned and hemmed in by all that isn't fiction.

Norman Vincent Peale photo

Related topics