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All my family has very good mathematical abilities - like, so dorky. I was the dork then in school - on any maths exams I'd get 100%. I just knew how to do maths and most people would hate it, but for some reason it just came.

People who know math understand what other mortals understand, but other mortals do not understand them. This asymmetry gives them a presumption of superior ability.

Obviously I had gone all through high school and into college, and you don't do that not knowing how to read.

I was rather foolish in saying that I did not like arithmetic and to learn figures when I did - I was not thinking quite what I was about. The sums can be done better, if I tried, than they are.

I didn't go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading.

When you don't understand something, you often laugh.

But to this day - I'm very literate now, I love to read, I read constantly - words don't resonate the way they do to a person with a formal education. They're like a maze, a puzzle that has to be opened up.

I was always good at math, but I was good at everything. It sounds obnoxious, but I was just smart. In school, it's kind of obvious when you're learning things faster than other kids.

I studied math, and I was terrible at it.

I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.