That’s power, Mitch, absolute power. And you know the old saying. Power ennobles. Absolute power ennobles absolutely. - Frederik Pohl

What helped most of all was the utter joy Cornut took in it all. It was, after all, his life. As he led the class, he felt again the wonder he himself had felt, sitting in a class like this one. He hardly heard the buzz from the class as he put his pointer down to gesture, and blindly picked it up again, still talking. Teaching mathematics was a kind of hypnosis for him, an intense, gut-wrenching absorption that had gripped him from the time of his first math class.

A soft drink and a couple of Twinkies didn’t make a meal, but at least they informed my stomach my intentions were good.

I found a man who claimed he used to be a radio engineer. And if he was an engineer, I was Albert Einstein’s mother, but at least he knew which end of a soldering iron was hot.