I really like science because it seems to be that place where you get the big picture, everything connects.

What I really like to learn how to do is to build sentences that are equal to mental states.

When you're sure of what you're looking at, look harder.

Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind.

Reading is the last act of secular prayer.

All we can ever do is lay a word in the hands of those who have put one in ours.

The job of taste was to thin the insane torrent of human creativity down to manageable levels. But the job of appetite was never to be happy with taste.

I write the way you might arrange flowers. Not every try works, but each one launches another. Every constraint, even dullness, frees up a new design.

I'd like, each time out as a writer, to reinvent who I am and what I'm doing. That's one of the great pleasures and rewards of the occupation.

I would say the flip side to my fascination with systems is a fascination with components. So many of my books are dialogues between little and big.

The use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body.

You've never lived what you are thinking, and that isn't good. Only the ideas we actually live are of any value.

It is equally important to learn from experience and from books.

Discover. Read. Learn.

A society that decides its controversial issues by ballots does better than one that uses bullets – which, after all, is no more likely to lead to the right conclusion than voting.

It is better to think of church in the ale-house than to think of the ale-house in church.

If we couldn't laugh at ourselves, that would be the end of everything.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

Each of us sees in others what we carry in our own hearts.

Have you ever heard of a woman bloody dictator or tyrant? I think not. If there were more women in power, I think we would have more harmony, more engagement and less suffering and less conflict.

The most important thing for us to do as beings is to be aware of our position in the world on a micro and macro level.