If the theory turns out to be right, that will be tremendously thick and tasty icing on the cake.

For most people, the major hurdle in grasping modern insights into the nature of the universe is that these developments are usually phrased using mathematics.

I think math is a hugely creative field, because there are some very well-defined operations that you have to work within. You are, in a sense, straightjacketed by the rules of the mathematics. But within that constrained environment, it's up to you what you do with the symbols.

It's hard to teach passionately about something that you don't have a passion for.

But if you think about a practical implication of enriching your life and giving you a sense of being part of a larger cosmos and possibly being able to use this [gravitational waves] as a tool in the future maybe to listen not just to black holes colliding, but maybe listen to the big bang itself, those kind of applications may happen in the not too distant future.

When you know the answer you want, it is often all too easy to figure out a way of getting it.

Sometimes nature guards her secrets with the unbreakable grip of physical law. Sometimes the true nature of reality beckons from just beyond the horizon.