For me, marriage is a grotesque, unforgiving, clunky contrivance. Yet society pushes it as a shimmering ideal.

You have to respect people's suffering. To deny that the world is unfair and painful for most of the people living in it would be false and judgmental.

I'm enthralled by the national yearning that the Russians had during the 50s and 60s. The whole century was pretty rough for them. They suffered genocide, war, poverty, and half the population was sent to labor camps. But they were determined to get into space first.

I'm a pessimist, but I have many painstakingly applied coats of optimism.

To me, a mark of maturity is realizing that nobody runs the world. Fat cat politicians and secret conspiracies don't control our lives. In reality, the world is much more complex than that.

As a child, I tried to play by the rules. I got very good grades in school; I was an Eagle Scout; and I believed in all of it.

If there's reason for hope, it lies in man's occasional binges of cooperation. To save our planet, we'll need that kind of heroic effort, in which all types of people join forces for the common good