I have a tendency, more than most other physicists, to try to figure out everything all at once, before I publish. And even to try to figure out everything in my head, without pencil and paper.

M stands for Magic, Mystery, or Matrixaccording to taste

If I take the theory as we have it now, literally, I would conclude that extra dimensions really exist. They're part of nature. We don't really know how big they are yet, but we hope to explore that in various ways.

You enter a completely new world where things aren't at all what you're used to.

There is a difference between knowing what is true and knowing why it is true

Im actually, for the most part, a complete agnostic politically.

One very important aspect of string theory is definitely testable. That was the prediction of supersymmetry, which emerged from string theory in the early '70s.