I revear all the gods but those that delight in cruelty. If Ra's light is kindly in your eyes than may his light shine on us all.

I love biomedical science, I love astronomy, and you can't really do much with those in a fantasy setting.

There are relatively few science fiction or fantasy books with the main character being an old person.

Normal' is a dryer setting.

I regarded drugs as somewhat like rattlesnakes - it's possible to pick one up without getting bit, but why bother?

There is simple ignorance, not knowing, and willful ignorance that refuses to know, that covers the light of knowledge with the dark blanket of bias.

It may be far in the future, but there's some kind of logical way to get from where we are to where the science fiction is.

So when I got out of the military, I went back to school in biology, and earned a biology degree at the University of Texas, and then did some graduate work in it.

My first degree came years before my second. I had wanted to be a physicist, but I flunked calculus.

Hard to be a physics major at Rice University if you have flunked calculus.

I've taught Sunday school, I've sung in the choir, I directed a choir.

It's scented! Your wedding invitations are scented?""It's meant to be lavender.""No, Dex - it's money. It smells of money.

Teachers make a difference, and we would serve our students better by focusing on attracting and retaining the quality teachers by raising teacher pay.

Envy ... is one form of a vice, partly moral, partly intellectual, which consists in seeing things never in themselves but only in their relations.

I love being a star more than life itself.

Silence...leads us to make a gift of self rather than a selfishness that has been gift-wrapped ...Silence does not mean running away but rather recollecting ourselves in the open space of God.

the skin of moss / holds the footprints of / star-footed birds.

I doubt if anything learnt at school is of more value than great literature learnt by heart.

I mean, technology is amoral. It has no morality.

But I like all the books. You've got to read them all to get the complete Harry Potter experience.

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.