“You're in bad shape. It looks like you're developing a soul.”

“You're in a bad way! Apparently, you have developed a soul.”

“You don't look normal, dear. You look sick. Because sick and not normal are the same thing. You're destroying yourself, and no one is going to tell you that - no one.”

“My dear, you are a mathematician. You're even more, you're a philosopher of mathematics. So do this for me: Tell me the final number.”

“You're afraid of it because it's stronger than you, you hate it because you're afraid of it, you love it because you can't master it. You can only love something that refuses to be mastered.”

“I looked for it but I found no way out of this wild logical thicket. This was a tangle every bit as unknown and terrifying as that behind the Green Wall These were creatures just as extraordinary and incomprehensible, and they said as much with no words. I imagined that I saw through some kind of thick class the square root of minus one-infinitely huge and at the same time infinitely small, scorpion-shaped, with that hidden but always sensed sting of the minus sign... But maybe that is nothing except my "soul," like the legendary scorpion of the ancients, which would deliberately sting itself with everything that...”

“Children are the only bold philosophers. And bold philosophers will always be children. So you're right, it's a child's question, just as it should be.”