The words are strung together, with their own special grammar-the laws of quantum theory-to form sentences, which are molecules. Soon we have books, entire libraries, made out of molecular "sentences." The universe is like a library in which the words are atoms. Just look at what has been written with these hundred words! Our own bodies are books in that library, specified by the organization of molecules-but the universe and literature are organizations of identical, interchangeable objects; they are information systems.

Science shows us what exists but not what to do about it.

Information is just signs and numbers, while knowledge involves their meaning. What we want is knowledge, but what we get is information.

Science has explored the microcosmos and the macrocosmos; we have a good sense of the lay of the land. The great unexplored frontier is complexity.

As I continued to fall into the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens, I sang to the beauty of the stars and made my peace with the darkness.

Theoretical and experimental physicists are now studying nothing at all-the vacuum. But that nothingness contains all of being.

Stars are like animals in the wild. We may see the very young but never their actual birth, which is a veiled and secret event.