A good book gets better on the second reading. A great book on the third. Any book not worth rereading isn’t worth reading. - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A good book gets better at the second reading. A great book at the third.

When some systems are stuck in a dangerous impasse, randomness and only randomness can unlock them and set them free.

The French have a distinction mathematician vs. "matheux". + The mathematicia(e)n is like someone who composes music; doesn't have to perform, be good w/instruments. Invents math. + The matheux is someone who plays an instrument; can be a virtuoso but doesn't compose music.

"I feel anger and frustration when I think that one in ten Americans beyond the age of high school is on some kind of antidepressant, such as Prozac. Indeed, when you go through mood swings, you now have to justify why you are not on some medication. There may be a few good reasons to be on medication, in severely pathological cases, but my mood, my sadness, my bouts of anxiety, are a second source of intelligence — perhaps even the first source. I get mellow and lose physical energy when it rains, become more meditative, and tend to write more and more slowly then, with the raindrops hitting the window, what Verlaine called autumnal "sobs" (sanglots). Some days I enter poetic melancholic states, what the Portuguese call saudade or the Turks huzun (from the Arabic word for sadness). Other days I am more aggressive, have more energy — and will write less, walk more, do other things, argue with researchers, answer emails, draw graphs on blackboards. Should I be turned into a vegetable or a happy imbecile?"