If we ruin the earth, there is no place else to go

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.

...Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office.

How I hate the sight of an umbrella!

When stuck in the river, it is best to dive and swim to the bank yourself before someone drops a large stone on your chest in an attempt to hoosh you there.

I will go to the Opening of Anything, including a Toilet Seat

Much was said and written, at the time, concerning the policy of adding the vast regions of Louisiana, to the already immense, and but half-tenanted territories of the United-States.

Violence is the way stupid people try to level the playing field.

Economic markets are collapsing. People all over the world are suffering and people afraid. What happens when peep are afraid? They become intolerant.

The buildings ... had suffered the inevitable shrinkage of places revisited.

We are told we must choose - the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is a life if not a series of negotiations between the old and the new?

John Irving once told me he doesn't start a novel until he knows the last sentence. I said, 'My God, Irving, isn't that like working in a factory?'