“I abandoned the assigned problems in standard calculus textbooks and followed my curiosity. Wherever I happened to be--a Vegas casino, Disneyland, surfing in Hawaii, or sweating on the elliptical in Boesel's Green Microgym--I asked myself, "Where is the calculus in this experience?”

“Yet in another way, calculus is fundamentally naive, almost childish in its optimism. Experience teaches us that change can be sudden, discontinuous, and wrenching. Calculus draws its power by refusing to see that. It insists on a world without accidents, where one thing leads logically to another. Give me the initial conditions and the law of motion, and with calculus I can predict the future -- or better yet, reconstruct the past. I wish I could do that now.”

“Calculus was not math. It was a fucking science experiment gone wrong.”

“I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas.”

“History was easy, but I don't know about the Calculus. It seemed like it was making sense, so that probably means I failed.”

“The problem is that I know the textbook answers to any question you care to ask.”