“He was too smart for the kinds of solace I could offer.”
“His reply offers infinite solace in a single word. Always.”
“I was going to get smart, and I was going to change the world. I was audacious enough to believe it, too. Fortunately it takes that kind of audacity to accomplish anything significant.”
“What had Pledger-Brown said? "Too bad, Davey; he wanted blood and all we could offer was guts.”
“I remember the revelation it was to me when I realized I'd rather be smart in the way Elvis Presley was than in the way, say, Ludwig Wittgenstein was. The thing was, you could imagine you could be smart like Wittgenstein by just thinking hard enough, but Elvis just had it. It was almost spiritual. A kind of grace.”
“Nowadays, I want to be smart, but back then, I'm afraid I wanted to seem smart, too.”