But the beauty of Einstein's equations for example is just as real to anyone who's experienced it as the beauty of music. We've learned in the 20th century that the equations that work have inner harmony.

Early-twentieth-century abstraction is art's version of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. It's the idea that changed everything everywhere: quickly decisively for good.

It took the Metropolitan Museum of Art nearly 50 years to wake up to Pablo Picasso. It didn't own one of his paintings until 1946 when Gertrude Stein bequeathed that indomitable quasi-Cubistic picture of herself - a portrait of the writer as a sumo Buddha - to the Met principally because she disliked the Museum of Modern Art.

Mild autism can give you a genius like Einstein. If you have severe autism you could remain nonverbal. You don't want people to be on the severe end of the spectrum. But if you got rid of all the autism genetics you wouldn't have science or art. All you would have is a bunch of social 'yak yaks.'

When you write biographies whether it's about Ben Franklin or Einstein you discover something amazing: They are human.

When I was old enough to go to movies alone I got to see 'Frankenstein' and 'Dracula' on the big screen. I just fell in love with them.