You don't want to raise a kid in a culture where the kid who asks the most questions is annoying. You want a culture where the kid who asks the most questions gets awards and gets another piece of cake.

I see myself in pop culture. I listen to pop music, I do pop things, and I'm also a scientist.

Somehow it's O.K. for people to chuckle about not being good at math. Yet if I said, 'I never learned to read,' they'd say I was an illiterate dolt.

Here's the problem, when you're stargazing on a mountain top you are partially oxygen-deprived and you're in command of million dollars worth of hardware. So as much as I would like to sip wine under the stars, it's contraindicated in the instructions on operating telescopes.

I know that the molecules in my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos. That makes me want to grab people on the street and say: ‘Have you HEARD THIS?

Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us.

Dinosaurs are extinct today because they lacked opposable thumbs and the brainpower to build a space program.