"Above all, Leonardo's relentless curiosity and experimentation should remind us of the importance of instilling, in both ourselves and our children, not just received knowledge but a willingness to question it — to be imaginative and, like talented misfits and rebels in any era, to think different."

"The greatest lesson from Leonardo's life is that creativity involves connecting things that others find unrelated."

"He showed that the secret to genius is a childlike sense of wonder that never fades."

"His was a combo that he shared with other great innovators: a desire to understand nature and the humanity embedded within it."

"If we want to be more like Leonardo, we have to be fearless about changing our minds based on new information."

"He made lists of things he wanted to learn — how to describe the tongue of a woodpecker, the jaw of a crocodile, the placenta of a calf — and then relentlessly pursued each item."

"There is no reason you actually need to know any of this. But I thought maybe, after reading this book, that you, like Leonardo, who one day put 'Describe the tongue of the woodpecker' on one of his to-do lists, would want to know. Just out of curiosity. Pure curiosity."

"One mark of a great mind is the willingness to change it. We can see that in Leonardo."

"Leonardo's notebooks offer the most vivid record we have of a great mind at work, with all of its passions and quirks on display."

"Leonardo da Vinci was not divine. He was human — brilliantly, stubbornly, fascinatingly, imperfectly human. That is what makes him worth studying."