“He seemed convinced that children's questions were much more important than those of an adult. He preferred smart questions to smart answers.”

“He preferred smart questions to smart answers.”

“The Professor never really seemed to care whether we figured out the right answer to a problem. He preferred our wild, desperate guesses to silence, and he was even more delighted when those guesses led to new problems that took us beyond the original one. He had a special feeling for what he called the "correct miscalculation," for he believed that mistakes were often as revealing as the right answers.”

“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”

“Because he had been- and in many ways still was- such a brilliant man, he no doubt understood the nature of his memory problem. It wasn't pride that prevented him from asking for help but a deep aversion to causing more trouble than necessary for those of us who lived in the normal world.”

“He discounted the value of his own efforts, and seemed to feel that anyone would have done the same.”

“Soon after I began working for the Professor, I realized that he talked about numbers whenever he was unsure of what to say or do. Numbers were also his way of reaching out to the world. They were safe, a source of comfort.”