“He treated Root exactly as he treated prime numbers. For him, primes were the base on which all other natural numbers relied; and children were the foundation of everything worthwhile in the adult world”

Source: The Housekeeper and the Professor

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "He treated Root exactly as he treated prime numbers. For him, primes were the base on which all other natural numbers r…" by Yōko Ogawa?
Yōko Ogawa photo
Yōko Ogawa 4
Japanese writer 1962

Related quotes

Pierre de Fermat photo

“And this proposition is generally true for all progressions and for all prime numbers; the proof of which I would send to you, if I were not afraid to be too long.”

Pierre de Fermat (1601–1665) French mathematician and lawyer

Et cette proposition est généralement vraie en toutes progressions et en tous nombres premiers; de quoi je vous envoierois la démonstration, si je n'appréhendois d'être trop long.
Fermat (in a letter dated October 18, 1640 to his friend and confidant Frénicle de Bessy) commenting on his statement that p divides a<sup> p−1</sup> − 1 whenever p is prime and a is coprime to p (this is what is now known as Fermat's little theorem).

Euclid photo

“A prime number is one (which is) measured by a unit alone.”

Elements, Book 7, Definition 11 (12 in certain editions)
Euclid’s Elements

Henry John Stephen Smith photo
Marcus du Sautoy photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo

“Treat bad men exactly as if they were insane.”

Elsie Venner (1859)
Context: I do not know in what shape the practical question may present itself to you; but I will tell you my rule in life, and I think you will find it a good one. Treat bad men exactly as if they were insane. They are in-sane, out of health, morally. Reason, which is food to sound minds, is not tolerated, still less assimilated, unless administered with the greatest caution; perhaps, not at all. Avoid collision with them, so far as you honorably can; keep your temper, if you can,—for one angry man is as good as another; restrain them from violence, promptly, completely, and with the least possible injury, just as in the case of maniacs,—and when you have got rid of them, or got them tied hand and foot so that they can do no mischief, sit down and contemplate them charitably...

Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“When you wish to represent a man speaking to a number of people, consider the matter of which he has to treat and adapt his action to the subject.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IX The Practice of Painting
Context: When you wish to represent a man speaking to a number of people, consider the matter of which he has to treat and adapt his action to the subject. Thus, if he speaks persuasively, let his action be appropriate to it. If the matter in hand be to set forth an argument, let the speaker, with the fingers of the right hand hold one finger of the left hand, having the two smaller ones closed; and his face alert, and turned towards the people with mouth a little open, to look as though he spoke; and if he is sitting let him appear as though about to rise, with his head forward. If you represent him standing make him leaning slightly forward with body and head towards the people. These you must represent as silent and attentive, all looking at the orator's face with gestures of admiration; and make some old men in astonishment at the things they hear, with the corners of their mouths pulled down and drawn in, their cheeks full of furrows, and their eyebrows raised, and wrinkling the forehead where they meet.

Quentin Crisp photo

Related topics