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.

Everything's a scandal. Dying's a scandal. But we all do it.

I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them.

War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.

The world isn't going to be destroyed, but you don't feel safe anymore in your plane or train or office or auditorium.

The more things I threw away, the more I found.

Everything that goes on in your whole life is a result of molecules rushing around somewhere in your brain.