The cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be.

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.

There are two kinds of people in this world: people who want to be desired, and people who want to be desired so much that they pretend they don't.

Writing is not a hobby. Collecting stamps or coins is a hobby. Writing is a calling.

Sanity lies somewhere between the inhibitions of conventional morality and the looseness of extreme impulse, but the area in-between is very fuzzy.

The law itself exhibits justice and teaches wisdom by abstinence from sensible images and by calling out to the Maker and Father of the universe.

There may be things that are completely unknowable to us, so we must be careful not to treat the limits of our knowledge as sure guides to the limit of what there is.

Men substitute words for reality and then argue about the words.

I have never really liked gigantic-scale painting. I think that so many artists are seduced by scale - "Well, if I make it that big then it has to go in a museum."

I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.

Without a serious study of journalism, there can be no understanding of citizenship, democracy, or community.

Everything that occupies space has form. The formless can only be infinite.