...quantum mechanics—the physics of our world—requires that you hold such pedestrian complaints in abeyance.

Over the centuries, monumental upheavals in science have emerged time and again from following the leads set out by mathematics.

Black holes provide theoreticians with an important theoretical laboratory to test ideas. Conditions within a black hole are so extreme, that by analyzing aspects of black holes we see space and time in an exotic environment, one that has shed important, and sometimes perplexing, new light on their fundamental nature.

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.

Oftentimes, if you're talking to a seasoned interviewer who asks you a question, they may do a follow-up if they didn't quite get it. It's rare that they'll do a third or fourth or fifth or sixth follow-up, because there's an implicit, agreed-upon decorum that they move on. Kids don't necessarily move on if they don't get it.

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

Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules... Mathematicians are more like classical composers.