My colleagues, they study artificial intelligence; me, I study natural stupidity.

Whenever there is a simple error that most laymen fall for, there is always a slightly more sophisticated version of the same problem that experts fall for.

It's frightening to think that you might not know something, but more frightening to think that, by and large, the world is run by people who have faith that they know exactly what is going on.

[Metaphors] replace genuine uncertainty about the world with semantic ambiguity. A metaphor is a cover-up.

The best things aren't perfectly constructed. They aren't illusions. they aren't larger than life. They are life.

Life is much shorter than I imagined it to be.

As soon as you believe that a label you've put on yourself is true, you've limited something that is literally limitless, you've limited who you are into nothing but a thought.

We are still focussing too much on gender. If we all just gave ourselves a break, knowing that we could all be everything, we'd feel relieved and more equal.

Because I'm anti-war, I've been called pro-Taliban.

So now we are pushing economic reform, bank reform and enterprise reform. So we can finish that reform this year, in September or October. Then our economy may be much more, you know, normalized.

To persevere, I think, is important for everybody. Don't give up, don't give in. There's always an answer to everything.

Most writers are trying to find what they think or feel. . . not simply working from the given, but toward the given, saying the unsayable and steadily asking, "What do I really feel about this?

I think there's a lot that's beautiful about religion and very inspiring, obviously, but I do think that God needs to be rescued from religion actually.

Big emotions that are unexplained are really scary. At least to me.