Giovanni

“Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside she is covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary--and terrible elegant. ”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“I have finally concluded, maybe that's what life is about: there's a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It's as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within never. Yes, that's it, an always within never.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“Così il piccolo principe addomesticò la volpe. E quando l'ora della partenza fu vicina:
« Ah! » disse la volpe, « piangerò.»
« La colpa è tua », disse il piccolo principe,
« io non ti volevo far del male, ma tu hai voluto che ti addomesticassi...»
« E' vero », disse la volpe.
« Ma piangerai! » disse il piccolo principe.
« E' certo », disse la volpe.
« Ma allora che ci guadagni? »
« Ci guadagno », disse la volpe, « il colore del grano. »

«Da te, gli uomini», disse il piccolo principe,
«coltivano cinquemila rose
nello stesso giardino...
e non trovano quello
che cercano...»

«Non lo trovano», ripetei.

«E tuttavia quello che cercano potrebbe essere
trovato in una sola rosa o in un po' d'acqua...»

«Certo», confermai.

E il piccolo principe soggiunse:

«Ma gli occhi sono ciechi. Bisogna cercare col cuore.»”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Il piccolo principe

“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. 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.”
― Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers