Art makes us human, music makes us human, and I deeply feel that science makes us human.

When we benefit from CT scanners, M.R.I. devices, pacemakers and arterial stents, we can immediately appreciate how science affects the quality of our lives.

That is, you can have nothingness, absolute nothingness for maybe a tiny fraction of a second, if a second can be defined in that arena, but then it falls apart into a something and an anti-something. And that something is then what we call the universe. But can we really understand that or put rigorous mathematics or testable experiments against that? Not yet. So one of the big holy grail of physics is to understand why there is something rather than nothing.

A watch worn by a particle of light would not tick at all. Light realizes the dreams of Ponce de Leon and the cosmetics industry: it doesn't age.

I love it when real science finds a home in a fictional setting, where you take some real core idea of science and weave it through a fictional narrative in order to bring it to life, the way stories can. That's my favorite thing.

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

When kids look up to great scientists the way they do to great musicians and actors, civilization will jump to the next level