It's a small thing, but it pleases me.

A close friend of ours has, for years, had her answering machine set to answer calls with:

"The only true number is one. All else is mere repetition." --Nabokov.

Today, I finally found the perfect comeback:

"We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'." --Sir Arthur Eddington.

And so I called her, and left it in reply.

It's a small thing, but it pleases me.

A close friend of ours has, for years, had her answering machine set to answer calls with:

"The only true number is one. All else is mere repetition." --Nabokov.

Today, I finally found the perfect comeback:

"We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'." --Sir Arthur Eddington.

And so I called her, and left it in reply.