All you ever were was a little bit of the universe, thinking to itself.

The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.

By the usual reckoning, the worst books make the best films.

One should never regret one's excesses, only one's failures of nerve.

The History Of The Universe In Three WordsCHAPTER ONEBang!CHAPTER TWOsssssCHAPTER THREEcrunch.THE END

The trick, he supposed, was never to lose sight of the theoretical possibility while not for a moment taking the idea remotely seriously.

Welcome to the future, she thought, surveying all this wordage and tat. All our tragedies and triumphs, our lives and deaths, our shames and joys are just stuffing for your emptiness.

One believed what one was told to believe, what it made sense to believe. Unless one was a foreigner, of course, or a philosopher.

[M]y determined and strenuous endeavours to take in absolutely nothing of what I had regarded as entirely the most irrelevant part of my schooling had patently not met with total success

I have seen people who find that grief gives them something they never had before, and no matter how terrible and real their loss they choose to hug that awfulness to them rather than push it away.

[T]here can be a form of vanity in grief that is indulged rather than suffered.

I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow.

You're a romantic. What's romantic about a guy wanting to go somewhere and actually getting there?

The old-fashioned sins of reading is the only sense that matters.

This, however, is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.

Mathematics is as much an aspect of culture as it is a collection of algorithms.

Nonviolence is the only way. Even if you achieve your goal by violent means there are always side effects, and these can be worse than the problem. Violence is against human nature.

I want to make meaningful music always - I think every artist does. We want our words and melodies to mean something to people, even if it is just one person.

I'm very lucky. I am one of those people who is able to go home, shut the front door and completely focus on the kids.

Change is a natural form of progression.