She had been living like a hermit herself, in a cramped, seedy apartment in Somerville, spending long hours in the lab. All-nighters had become a regular thing. She didn't have any close friends, didn't go out on dates, didn't even go to the movies by herself. She had sacrificed a normal life in order to get a PhD, and become a scientist.

You know what's wrong with scientific power? It's a form of inherited wealth. And you know what assholes congenitally rich people are.

And entertainment has nothing to do with reality. Entertainment is antithetical to reality.

Sometimes women scare the hell out of me.

Writing a book is a bit like going on location for a movie. You're absent from your life, your family, and your friends. You're psychologically gone, so you might as well be physically gone.

Right now, scientists are in exactly the same position as Renaissance painters, commissioned to make the portrait the patron wants done, And if they are smart, they'll make sure their work subtly flatters the patron. Not overtly. Subtly.

In our modern complex world, fundamentalism is dangerous because of its rigidity and its imperviousness to other ideas.