Science is nothing more than a method of inquiry. The method says an assertion is valid - and will be universally accepted - only if it can be reproduced by others, and thereby independently verified. The impersonal rigor of the method has produced enormously powerful results for 400 years. The scientific method is utterly apolitical. A truth in science is verifiable whether you are black or white, male or female, old or young. It’s verifiable whether you know the experimenter, or whether you don’t.

Yes, you have cancer. Yes, your kids are on drugs. Yes, there is an elephant outside your tent. Now the question becomes, What are you going to do about it? Subsequent emotions may not be pleasant, but the hysteria stops. Hysteria accompanies an unwillingness to look at what is really going on; it promotes an unwillingness to look. We feel we are afraid to look, when actually it is not-looking that makes us afraid. The minute we look, we cease being afraid.

We all live every day in virtual environments, defined by our ideas.

There is always a cause for fear. The cause may change over time, but the fear is always with us.

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

Do you want to understand how to swim, or do you want to jump in and start swimming? Only people who are afraid of the water want to understand it. Other people jump in and get wet.

The rock, for its part, is not even aware of our existence because we are alive for only a brief instant of its lifespan. To it, we are like flashes in the dark.