“Now he knew: They were real. Who’d make up a thing like this? Okay, one of them was a cheese that rolled around of its own accord, but nobody was perfect.”

“He needed his solitude at times, but he wasn't a hermit. He did a lot of socializing. Sometimes I think it was like he was storing up company for the times when he knew nobody would be around.”

“He wanted to make a mirror. Glass, mercury and a wooden frame- the perfect mirror. But he was no good at it. So he went to the people he knew and asked them for a mirror. All they could give him were bits of old mirror. He took these home, stuck them on a board and hung it up. It's a mirror.”

“They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds.”

“They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds.”

“In a real war no one knew which side he was on, and there were no flags or commentators or winners. In a real war there were no enemies.”

“Like the Cubists before them, the abstractionists felt a beautiful thing in perceiving how the medium can, of its own accord, carry one into the unknown, that is to the discovery of new structures. What an inspiration the medium is..”

“He came into the world like a delivery that no one knew what to do with, and nobody wanted to sign for.”

“Nobody knew what the Company wanted. Various witnesses assigned motives according to their own fears. Few came anywhere near the mark.”

“Maybe all people with minds like Isaac's were the same. She knew he would make a much larger contribution than she ever would - he cared only about things much bigger than his own life. Ideas, truths, the reasons things were. As if he himself, his own existence, was somehow incidental.”