...Because what's the meaning of doing dishes if you're not driven by something beyond necessity.

We feel certain that the extraterrestrial message is a mathematical code of some kind. Probably a number code. Mathematics is the one language we might conceivably have in common with other forms of intelligent life in the universe. As I understand it, there is no reality more independent of our perception and more true to itself than mathematical reality.

I am not particularly distressed by the state of fiction or the role of the writer. The more marginal, perhaps ultimately the more trenchant and observant and finally necessary he'll become.

Any assault on the borders of perception is going to seem rash at first.

A Catholic is raised with the idea that he will die any minute now and if he doesn't live his life in a certain way, this death is an introduction to an eternity of pain.

Ecology is boring for the same reason that destruction is fun.

Past, present and future are not amenities of language. Time unfolds into the seamsof being. It passes through you, making and shaping.