J. Robert Oppenheimer

I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

My childhood did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.

Life would pall if it were all sugar; salt is bitter if taken by itself; but when tasted as part of the dish, it savours the meat. Difficulties are the salt of life.

The cruel ambush of 9/11 supposedly 'changed everything,' slapping us back to reality. Yet we are constantly shocked, shocked by the foreseeable.

As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short.