Paul Hoffman Quotes

When he said someone had 'died", Erdős meant that that the person had stopped doing mathematics. When he said someone had "left", the person had died.

Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it as it is to its victims—the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates.

Better a live dog than a dead lion.

People treat the present moment as if it is just a stopping point on the way to some great goal that will happen in the future, and then they are surprised that the long day closes; they look back on their life and see that the things they let go by so unregarded, the small pleasures they dismissed so easily were in fact the true significance of their lives- all the time these things were the great and wonderful successes and purpose of their existence.

...this refinement and delicacy were what Cale adored; but Cale had been beaten into shape, hammered in dreadful fires of fear and pain. How could she be with him for long? A secret part of Arbell had been searching for some time for a way to leave her lover—although she was unaware of this, it is only fair to record. And so as Cale waited for her to save him while he worked out a way of saving her, she had already chosen the bitter but reasonable path of the good, of the many over the one...

Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation.