My emotional investment is in finding truth. If string theory is wrong, I'd like to have known that yesterday. But if we can show it today or tomorrow, fantastic.

All you are is a bag of particles acting out the laws of physics. That to me is pretty clear.

Assessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling in the dark with an unknown opponent.

Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty.

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

Einstein comes along and says, space and time can warp and curve, that's what gravity is. Now string theory comes along and says, yes, gravity, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism - all together in one package, but only if the universe has more dimensions than the ones that we see.

The main challenge that television presents is that I have a tendency to say things with a great deal of precision and accuracy. Often a description of that sort, which will work in a book because people can read it slowly - they can turn the pages back and so on - doesn't really work on TV because it interrupts the flow of the moving image.