Tiny differences in input could quickly become overwhelming differences in output.... In weather, for example, this translates into what is only half-jokingly known as the Butter- fly Effect—the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York.

Cyberspace, especially, draws us into the instant.

One of the ways the telegraph changed us as humans was it gave us a new sense of what time it is. It gave us an understanding of simultaneity. It gave us the ability to synchronize clocks from one place to another. It made it possible for the world to have standard time and time zones and then Daylight Savings Time and then after that jetlag. All of that is due to the telegraph because, before that, the time was whatever it was wherever you were.

The history of life is written in terms of negative entropy.

You can't waste time and you can't save time; you can only choose what you do at any given moment.

I can't remember the last book that taught me so much, and so well, about what it means to be human.

We choose mania over boredom every time.