This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't.

In the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better.

Science can't tell you why anything happens.

I tended to faint when I saw accident victims in the emergency ward, during surgery, or while drawing blood.

Reality is always greater - much greater - than what we know, than whatever we can say about it.

I was raised with the idea that if you're not smart enough to do science you can do politics.

Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am. There is no mystery about why this should be so. Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes -- with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That's not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.