"The only thing that makes me truly happy is mathematics, snow, ice, numbers. To me, the number system is like human life. First you have the natural numbers, the ones that are whole and positive, like the numbers of a small child. But human consciousness expands, and the child discovers longing.
Do you know the mathematical expression for longing?
Negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you're missing something. Then the child discovers the in-between spaces, between stones, between people, between numbers, and that produces fractions. But it's like a kind of madness, because it doesn't even stop there. It never stops. There are numbers that we can't even begin to comprehend. Mathematics is a vast open landscape. You head towards the horizon that is always receding... like Greenland.
And that's... that's what I can't live without."
Smilla's Sense of Snow
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