I can't stand clutter. I can't stand piles of stuff. And whenever I see it, I basically just throw the stuff away.

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.

The beauty of string theory is the metaphor kind of really comes very close to the reality. The strings of string theory are vibrating the particles, vibrating the forces of nature into existence, those vibrations are sort of like musical notes. So string theory, if it's correct, would be playing out the score of the universe.

One of the wonders of science is that it is completely universal. It crosses national boundaries with total ease.

We might be the holographic image of a two-dimensional structure.

Most scientists like to operate in the context of economy. If you don't need an explanatory principle, don't invoke it.

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.