The one experience that I hope every student has at some point in their lives is to have some belief you profoundly, deeply hold, proved to be wrong because that is the most eye-opening experience you can have, and as a scientist, to me, is the most exciting experience I can ever have.

We should provide the meaning of the universe in the meaning of our own lives. So I think science doesn't necessarily have to get in the way of kind of spiritual fulfillment.

Metaphysical speculation is independent of the physical validity of the Big Bang itself and is irrelevant to our understanding of it.

The universe has a much greater imagination than we do, which is why the real story of the universe is far more interesting than any of the fairy tales we have invented to describe it.

People are interested in science, but they don't always know they're interested in science, and so I try to find a way to get them interested.

I cannot stress often enough that what science is all about is not proving things to be true but proving them to be false.

Teaching and writing, to me, is really just seduction; you go to where people are and you find something that they're interested in and you try and use that to convince them that they should be interested in what you have to say.