Paolo Giordano Quotes
Best 50 Quotes by Paolo Giordano – Page 1 of 2
“In the end we are almost never happy or unhappy because of what happens to us; we are one or the other depending on the humor that flows inside us.”
The Solitude of Prime Numbers Quotes
“All Mattia saw was a shadow moving toward him. He instinctively closed his eyes and then felt Alice’s hot mouth on his, her tears on his cheek, or maybe they weren’t hers, and finally her hands, so light, holding his head still and catching all his thoughts and imprisoning them there, in the space that no longer existed between them.”
“Alone and lost, close together, but not close enough to really touch.”
“Because she knew that Mattia spoke little but, when he did, it was worth keeping quiet and listening.”
“Because they were linked by an invisible thread, hidden among a thousand things of little importance, which could only exist between two people like them: two solitudes that recognized each other.”
“By now he had learned. Choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains. It had happened with Michela and then with Alice and again now. He recognized them this time: those seconds were there, and he would never make a mistake again.”
“Denis's love for Mattia had burned itself out, like a forgotten candle in an empty room, leaving behind a ravenous discontent.”
Book of the Week
Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“Even though he was afraid to admit it, when he was with her it seemed it was worth doing all those normal things that normal people do.”
“Every time she heard the click of the shutter, followed by that faint rustle, she remembered when she used to catch grasshoppers in the garden of their house in the mountains when she was a little girl, trapping them between her cupped hands. She thought that it was the same with photographs, only now she seized time and fixed it on celluloid, capturing it halfway through its jump toward the next moment.”
“Finally her hands, so light, holding his head still and catching all his thoughts and imprisoning them there, in the space that no longer existed between them.”
“He opened his mouth to reply that feeling special is the worst kind of cage that a person can build for himself, but he didn't say anything.”
“He was dressed anonymously and had the posture of someone who doesn't know how to occupy the space of his own body.”
“His eyes were too dark for her to make out any spark in them.”
“His scars were hidden and safe in her hand.”
Book of the Week
Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“If we couldn't see anything outside the car, if we didn't know we were moving, there would be no way of telling whether it was the raindrops' fault or our own.”
“In fact, they didn't talk much at all, but they spent time together, each in his own abyss, held safe and tight by the other's silence.”
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“Small minds have always lashed out at what they don't understand.”
“In his first year at university, Mattia had learned that, among prime numbers, there are some that are even more special. Mathematicians call them twin primes: pairs of prime numbers that are close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching. Numbers like 11 and 13, like 17 and 19, 41 and 43. If you have the patience to go on counting, you discover that these pairs gradually become rarer. You encounter increasingly isolated primes, lost in that silent, measured space made only of ciphers, and you develop a distressing presentiment that the pairs encountered up until that point were accidental, that solitude is the true destiny. Then, just when you're about to surrender, when you no longer have the desire to go on counting, you come across another pair of twins, clutching each other tightly. There is a common conviction among mathematicians that however far you go, there will always be another two, even if no one can say where exactly, until they are discovered.”
“In the end it happens, in some way you couldn't imagine before.”
“It was another of the things he had left behind, another obvious step in a boy's life that he had decided not to take, so as to stay as far as possible from the machinery of life.”
“It was strange to find them here, still alive, with their shared bits of past that suddenly counted for nothing.”
“Mattia thought that he and Alice were like that, twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other.”
Book of the Week
Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“Mattia thought there was nothing good about having his mind. That he would happily have unscrewed it and replaced it with a different one, or even with a package of biscotti, provided it was empty and light. He opened his mouth to reply that feeling special is the worst kind of cage that a person can build for himself, but he didn't say anything.”
“Mattia was right: the days had slipped over her skin like a solvent, one after the other, each removing a very thin layer of pigment from her tattoo, and from both of their memories. The outlines, like the circumstances, were still there, black and well delineated, but the colors had merged together until they faded into a dull, uniform tonality, a neutral absence of meaning.”
“No, what she had in front of her was a grown-up person who had built a life around a terrifying abyss, on terrain that had already collapsed, and yet who had succeeded, far away from here, among people Alice didn't know.”
“People took what they wanted, they clutched at coincidences, the few there were, and made a life from them.”
“Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves. They hold their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed, like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than the rest. They are suspicious, solitary numbers, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful. Sometimes he thought that they had ended up in that sequence by mistake, that they'd been trapped, like pearls strung on a necklace. Other times he suspected that they too would have preferred to be like all others, just ordinary numbers, but for some reason they couldn't do it. This second thought struck him mostly at night, in the chaotic interweaving of images that comes before sleep, when the mind is too weak to tell itself lies.”
“Separating them were two layers of brick, a few inches of plaster, and nine years of silence.”
“She and Mattia were united by an invisible, elastic thread, buried under a pile of meaningless things, a thread that could exist only between two people like themselves: two people who had acknowledged their own solitude within the other.”
Book of the Week
Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“She couldn't remember what they had talked about, only that she had looked at her rapt from a place just behind her eyes, a place full of jumbled thoughts that she had kept to herself even then.”
“She emptied herself of Fabio and of herself, of all the useless efforts she had made to get where she was and find nothing there. With detached curiosity she observed the rebirth of her weaknesses, her obsessions. This time she would let them decide, since she hadn't been able to do anything anyway. Against certain parts of yourself you remain powerless, she said to herself, as she regressed pleasurably to the time when she was a girl.”
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“Once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”