Freud is finished, Einstein's next.

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.

Technology and violence are interdependent.

Bloomberg weighed three hundred pounds. This itself was historical. I revered his weight. It was an affirmation of humanity's reckless potential; it went beyond legend and returned through mist to the lovely folly of history. To weigh three hundred pounds. What devout vulgarity.

Every advance in knowledge and technique is matched by a new kind of death, a new strain. Death adapts, like a viral agent.

He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.

A writer decides to follow some ideas and not others for reasons that aren't always clear to him. It's often a matter of intuition.