You want to get to the top of the cliff. But that's not what you focus on immediately. You focus on the next ledge just beyond your reach, because you need to do one clever thing to get up there. And then, once you get there, you do it again. A lot of this is rather boring and not very glamorous. But you can't jump cliffs in a single bound.

When I was seven or eight, whenever I was getting too rowdy at night, my parents would give me a maths workbook to work on to quieten me down.

It was traditional to not actually cash the prizes that Erdos did award while he was alive. People usually framed the cheque instead.

Terence Tao Quotes