Here am I, lying under a hayrick. The tiny narrow spot I’m taking up is so infinitesimally small by comparison with the rest of space, where I am not and which has nothing to do with me, and the portion of time which I may succeed in living through is so insignificant when confronted with eternity, wherein I was not and shall not be. Yet within this atom, this mathematical point, the blood is circulating, the brain is working, something or other yearns. . . . 
   Bazarov, in Ivan S. Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons
   (translated by Bernard Guilbert Guerney) 
 

The interaction between thought and language always fascinated Bohr. He often spoke of the fact that any attempt to express a thought involves some change, some irrevocable interference with the essential idea, and this interference becomes all the stronger as one tries to express oneself more clearly. Here again there is a complementarity, as he frequently pointed out, between clarity and truth—between Klarheit und Wahrheit, as he liked to say. This is why Bohr was not a very clear lecturer. He was intensely interested in what he had to say, but he was too much aware of the intricate web of ideas, of all possible cross-connections; this awareness made his talks fascinating but hard to follow. 
   Victor F. Weisskopf, “Niels Bohr, the Quantum, and the World”
   (from Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume) 
 

Electrons exist both on their own, as free particles, and as constituents of atoms, and they can change from one role to the other and back. An electron forming part of a carbon atom in the skin of your wrist could be knocked out of position by a passing cosmic ray and become part of the tiny electric current in your digital wristwatch, and then in turn become part of an oxygen atom in the air you breathe as you raise your arm to look at the time. 
   Frank Close, Michael Martin, and Christine Sutton, 
   The Particle Explosion
 

In the [scanning tunneling microscope] the “aperture” is a tiny tungsten probe, its tip ground so fine that it may consist of only a single atom. . . . Piezoelectric controls maneuver the tip to within a nanometer or two of the surface of a conducting specimen—so close that the electron clouds of the atom at the probe tip and of the nearest atom of the specimen overlap. 
   H. Kumar Wickramasinghe, “Scanned-Probe Microscopes”
   (Scientific American, October 1989) 
 

Simmel, on the basis of a partial reading of Nietzsche, recognizes this in his Metaphysics of Death: “The secret of form lies in the fact that it is a boundary; it is the thing itself and at the same time the cessation of the thing, the circumscribed territory in which the Being and the No-longer-being of the thing are one and the same.” If form is a boundary, there then arises the problem of the plurality of boundaries—and the calling them into question. 
   Manfredo Tafuri
   The Sphere and the Labyrinth: 
   Avant Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s
 

The right thing and the time it takes are connected by a mysterious force, just like a piece of sculpture and the space it fills.
   Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities
   (translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser)
 

Fans of Eric Kraft's Peter Leroy series will unequivocally delight in this latest installment of Peter’s adventures growing up in post-WWII Babbington, the “clam capital of America.” Readers unfamiliar with this masterful storyteller’s pellucid prose will equally enjoy his account of Peter’s momentous and treacherous initiation into junior high school . . . a magical, funny, healing journey that features familiar and unusual memories . . . without lapsing into mere nostalgia.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Kraft’s humor is always warm and sometimes laugh-aloud, his characters are wonderfully sketched, and his themes are as thought-provoking as his efforts are charming. Delightful.
Library Journal (starred review)

From the in-depth examination of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, to the inner workings of the drive mechanism of a windup record player, or the perfect proportions for a beer and lemonade shandy, the young Peter leads us on a merry investigation and exploration of his (and our) world, and, in the process, invests it with a great deal of warmth and humor and charm. . . . Mr. Kraft is a splendid, smart, funny, slyly sexy, and insightful writer . . . and Mr. Kraft continues to be a pleasure to read.
Michael Z. Jody, The East Hampton Star

The title of this sly and extremely funny book is also the title of a paper that Peter is assigned by his science teacher, the luscious, leggy Miss Rheingold. We—and Peter—learn quite a bit about Miss Rheingold, although nowhere near as much as Peter would like. We also learn about epistemology; the boundaries of the self; the building of backyard lighthouses; terrazzo floors; Chinese checkers; American education; the restricted vision of children (and their parents); and the design of such exquisitely intricate gadgets as the phonograph, the scanning tunneling microscope, the universe, and the novel. . . . In what other novel this year will you find the instructions, complete with diagram, for constructing a flour bomb? Or a discussion, by a gum-chewing seventh-grade girl, of Zwischenraum, the empty space between the components of an atom? Or a canny analysis of racial prejudice proffered by Porky White, the entrepreneur behind the phenomenally successful Kap’n Klam Family Restaurants? 
Like childhood itself, Where Do You Stop? is filled with wonders. It is a book designed to leave its readers--and it deserves many of them--as happy as clams.
Walter Satterthwait, The New York Times Book Review

While most readers have been looking the other way, writer Eric Kraft has turned out a series of whiz-bang novellas about a kid named Peter Leroy who does a lot of neat stuff, like thinking, squidging for clams with his toes, and noticing the fantastic legs of his new science teacher, Miss Rheingold. . . . His books are good, luminously intelligent fun.
Time

The giddy excitement of expanding scientific consciousness is coupled with the awakening of sexual desires in this goofy and thoroughly enjoyable novel . . . . You won’t want this charming little exercise in learned whimsy to end.
Timothy Hunter, The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Working on a vast scale but serving up the components of his ongoing saga in tasty morsels, Kraft has managed to create a 1950s world that is both wildly eccentric and universal in its appeal. His young protagonist, earnest screwball Peter Leroy, is the narrator of these “adventures, experiences and observations” . . . and he’s as winning a character as any to have appeared recently on the American literary scene. Where Do You Stop? is the latest installment, and it’s a treat. . . . It’s an enchanting comic meditation on the quirkiness of memory and the joys of daydreaming. At its most ambitious moments, it’s nothing less than an attempt to comprehend the nature of the universe itself. . . . Droll, provocative, and filled with memorable characters, Where Do You Stop? confirms Kraft as a writer who is every bit as inventive as he is entertaining.
Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times & Post-Intelligencer

A hilarious reminiscence of Peter’s pre-adolescent years, his awakening to sexual feelings, and other inchoate confusions . . . .
Bruce Allen, USA TODAY

Kraft gets better all the time, and Peter Leroy’s fondly remembered world grows richer and funnier—more provocative, too—with each new episode. Stay tuned.”
Alicia Miller, Chagrin Falls Currents