I had been impressed by the fact that biological systems were based on molecular machines and that we were learning to design and build these sorts of things.

In thinking about nanotechnology today, what's most important is understanding where it leads, what nanotechnology will look like after we reach the assembler breakthrough.

Likewise nanotechnology will, once it gets under way, depend on the tools we have then and our ability to use them, and not on the steps that got us there.

My work at MIT had focused on what we could build in space once we had inexpensive space transportation and industrial facilities in orbit. And this led to various sorts of work in space development.

The basic parts, the start-up molecules, can be supplied in abundance and don't have to be made by some elaborate process. That immediately makes things simpler.

On the molecular scale, you find it's reasonable to have a machine that does a million steps per second, a mechanical system that works at computer speeds.

In a sense, artificial intelligence will be the ultimate tool because it will help us build all possible tools.

Scientists study physical things, then describe them; engineers describe physical things, then build them.

...Local prohibitions cannot block advances in military and commercial technology... Democratic movements for local restraint can only restrain the world's democracies, not the world as a whole.

Nature draws no line between living and nonliving.

Any powerful technology can be abused.

One of the best ways to attract capital is to outperform the competition.

Everybody has friends they dislike; people who they have slipped into relationships with, people they would not have chosen had they been more cautious, more circumspect.

Fashion is not frivolous.

Peering from some high window; at the gold of November sunset (and feeling that if day has to become night this is a beautiful way).

To the young: Work, work, work, and then work some more!

That was all he said, except for "Aaaeerrgghhh." Which is not really a word. But the reason that he screamed "Aaaeerrgghhh" was that Franco had bitten him savegly on the wrist.

The body should not just be something you see. It's also the inside of it. It's frightening and abstract and much more than pretty or not pretty. The shape of it is boring.

The measure would set criminal penalties, the same as those that would apply if harm or death happened to the pregnant woman, for those who harm a fetus.

I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious." "Oh, that's nonsense, Algy. You never talk anything but nonsense." "Nobody ever does.

I am not afraid of the darkness. Real death is preferable to a life without living.