Ragini

“North Korean defectors often find it hard to settle down. It is not easy for somebody who’s escaped a totalitarian country to live in the free world. Defectors have to rediscover who they are in a world that offers endless possibilities. Choosing where to live, what to do, even which clothes to put on in the morning is tough enough for those of us accustomed to making choices; it can be utterly paralyzing for people who’ve had decisions made for them by the state their entire lives.”
― Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

“The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s must be beautiful; the ideas like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.”
― G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

“Emotions somehow meant more when they were handwritten on precious scraps of paper and conveyed on slow trains running out of fuel.”
― Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

“Real mathematics must be justified as art if it can be justified at all.”
― G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology