Last night, I had that dream again. I dreamt I had to take a test, in a Dairy Queen, on another planet.

Writers want to summarize: What does this mean? What did we learn from this? That's a very 19th-century way of thinking about art, because it assumes that it should make our lives better or teach us something.

I'm an average enough person to point to the things I've gotten to see that are awe-inspiring.

Life goes by so fast. It's really - and a lot of times things happen so fast you don't know - how should I react.

I think a lot of people in Washington are extremely suspicious of NASA.

If I'm confused, I just spend some time looking at the sky and falling into it. It's not a meditation that anyone taught me, it's something I've done my whole life, and liked doing, and it made me feel like nothing.

Books are the way the dead talk to the living.