For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

I don't want to believe. I want to know.

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

You have to know the past to understand the present.

Scary to be vulnerable, to open your heart but, oh, the out of this world feeling as you savor the pleasure!

For his children, he would move mountains.

You have to give your art everything you can - I don't mean only writing, but studying other poets and poetics, thinking, reading what poets have written other than their poetry.

I like going out and I like being single, but a growing part of me would rather just stay home, cook food with someone I really like, and do nothing.

I've never had access to another person's art and work or, particularly, someone who is as prolific and was able to externalize his interior world as deeply as Kurt [Cobain] could.

I have made no money. I am as poor now as ever I was in my life - except in hope, which is by no means bankable.

Sometimes my skating allows me to do things I never dreamed possible.

In the summer of 80, Silhouette bought my first book.

God, a born extremist, is the diplomat's worst enemy. Quite apart from the fact that His decrees are irrevocable, the Absolute will not allow anyone to relativize matters.

I think every person and place is interesting, and there's an interesting story behind every door.