Life from nonlife, like wine from water, has long been considered a miracle wrought by gods or God. Now it is seen to be the near-inevitable consequence of our thermal and chemical circumstances.

Reverence is the sense that there is something larger than the self, larger even than the human, to which one accords respect and awe and assent.

The most reliable joy is to be out of doors, to be a creature among other creatures. I find it very restful.

The Senegalese conservationist Baba Dioum can summarize: "In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught."

We are embedded in the great evolutionary story of planet Earth, the spare, elegant process of mutation and selection and bricolage. And this means that we are anything but alone.

Human consensus does not generate reality. Were it able to do so, the Sun would have taken to orbiting the Earth some time ago.

When the responses elicited by the Epic of Evolution are gathered together several religious principles emerge that I can believe, serve as a framework for a global Ethos.

It is as we respond to the understandings and feelings inherent in . . . art that we acquire much of our truth, much of our nobility and grace, and much of our pleasure.

Fallon affected my body in weird ways. But only because she’s different, I told myself.

I reject discrimination against Muslim Americans - who are just as patriotic as we are.

If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home there?

Science is not inherently good.

If people knew where the sounds in Jurassic Park came from, it'd be rated R!

A standard line, promoted by people like Clement Greenberg,.. is that politics contaminates art, and Manet is often cited as an example of art for art's sake.

A second book that makes you rethink the first book is the Holy Grail of a series.

... the movements of the body reveal the movements of the soul.

People inspire me. Curiosity inspires me. Mystery inspires me.

I will say again that I have never, and would never, harm a child. It sickens me that people have written untrue things about me.