When you finally understand the universe, it will not only be stranger than you imagine, it will be stranger than you can imagine.

I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself.

We seldom stop to think that we are still creatures of the sea, able to leave it only because, from birth to death, we wear the water-filled space suits of our skins.

Then he [The Star Child] waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something.

There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.

Look, whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.) Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.