A Quote by Richard Preston

If equations are trains threading the landscape of numbers, then no train stops at pi. — © Richard Preston
If equations are trains threading the landscape of numbers, then no train stops at pi.
Pi is not merely the ubiquitous factor in high school geometry problems; it is stitched across the whole tapestry of mathematics, not just geometry's little corner of it. Pi occupies a key place in trigonometry too. It is intimately related to e, and to imaginary numbers. Pi even shows up in the mathematics of probability
All my gowns have trains on them. I make a train that goes on forever. I love long trains and then I stand there and twirl around and wrap myself up in it.
Why learn a number like pi to so many decimal places? The answer I gave then as I do now is that pi is for me an extremely beautiful and utterly unique thing. Like the Mona Lisa or a Mozart symphony, pi is its own reason for loving it.
What's odd about it is that I see it as these moments and then other people, I'll reply to someone, and they're like, "Follow me back, let's be friends!" and I'm like, "See, on the train you have a great conversation between stops and you don't necessarily exchange phone numbers. It's not that deep, actually. Why can't the moment just be what it is?"
How to paint the landscape: First you make your bow to the landscape. Then you wait, and if the landscape bows to you, then, and only then, can you paint the landscape.
There are fast ideas and slow ideas, just as there are fast trains and slow trains. When it comes to money, most people are on the slow train looking out the window watching the fast train pass them by. If you want to become rich quickly, your plan must include fast ideas.
If there are four equations and only three variables, and no one of the equations is derivable from the others by algebraic manipulation then there is another variable missing.
It was like the classic scene in the movies where one lover is on the train and one is on the platform and the train starts to pull away, and the lover on the platform begins to trot along and then jog and then sprint and then gives up altogether as the train speeds irrevocably off. Except in this case I was all the parts: I was the lover on the platform, I was the lover on the train. And I was also the train.
There's a big link between trains and film. One of the first filmed objects was a train. The clickety-clack of the projector and the clickety-clack of the train are similar. There is the idea of the voyage - every voyage is a story. I wonder if film would have been invented without the train.
Do people who wave at trains Wave at the driver, or at the train itself? Or, do people who wave at trains Wave at the passengers? Those hurtling strangers, The unidentifiable flying faces?
What good your beautiful proof on the transcendence of Pi: Why investigate such problems, given that irrational numbers do not even exist?
The soul may not be destroyed. The soul goes on forever. Like the number pi, it is without cessation or conclusion. Like pi it is a constant. Pi is an irrational number, incapable of being made into a fraction, impossible to divide from itself. So, too, the soul is an irrational, indivisible equation that perfectly expresses one thing: you.
Those who think 'Science is Measurement' should search Darwin's works for numbers and equations.
Is love supposed to last throughout all time, or is it like trains changing at random stops? If I loved her, how could I leave her? If I felt that way then, how come I don't feel anything now?
A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station….
Another train will come. Why rush? Why worry? Why go crazy? Another train will come. And sure enough, another train going my way was pulling into the station. My bad mood evaporated. I entered the car smiling, certain that there would be more missed trains in my life, more closed doors in my face, but there would always be another train rumbling down the tracks in my direction.
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