Do not lose your faith. A mighty fortress is our mathematics. Mathematics will rise to the challenge, as it always has. - Stanisław Ulam

It is still an unending source of surprise for me to see how a few scribbles on a blackboard or on a sheet of paper could change the course of human affairs.

Thanks to my memory, which enabled me to quote Latin and to discuss Greek and Roman civilization, it became obvious to some of my colleagues in other fields that I was interested in things outside mathematics. This lead quickly to very pleasant relationships.

In mathematics, as in physics, so much depends on chance, on a propitious moment.