“When I ‘decided’ to become a mathematician, it was not a decision. I could not do otherwise. You don’t decide to fall in love with somebody. It just happens.”

“A student desperately trying to evaluate a definite integral at wit's end shows up at von Neumann's office for any suggestion of an approach. Von Neumann thinks for a few moments and tells him the value of the integral. The student, amazed and dismayed at the absence of any details, respectfully requests that von Neumann ‘explain it a different way.’ Von Neumann thinks some more and cheerfully announces that both ways yield the announced value.”