There are more potential combinations of DNA [physical forms] than there are atoms in the universe.

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.

Art's cruel. You can get away with murder with words. But a picture is like a window straight through to your inmost heart.

A country so rich that it can send people to the moon still has hundreds of thousands of its citizens who can't read. That's terribly troubling to me.

If I make a set of rules, then a guy goes out and steals an airplane. He comes back and says, 'It wasn't in the rules.'

It makes it easier to play evil and to act evil to people that you really like. You have a feeling about them, so you know what the opposite is.

There was a point in time where the thought of people even talking about me made me anxious. Physically.

Every child should have a chance to feel special.

When you are engaged in both trying to kill and capture the enemy and get support from the local population, you have to be always asking yourself, "Is what I'm doing keeping that balance?"

To be saints is not a privilege for a few, but a vocation for everyone.

Small minds can never handle great themes.

When a show becomes a mega hit internationally, you lose a lot of privacy, you become a hider. It's not a human condition we are exposed to very often.