WhenIWasYourAge: People were never "living with their disease." We cured them. Or they died from it.

There's a lot of memorization that goes on in school. You memorize vocabulary words and all these sorts of things.

I can tell you that in my modern life I enjoy language. I enjoy words, their meaning, what they sound like to the ear, what they sound like to the listener. I strive to write the perfect sentence in all that I do, and when I write [the] perfect sentence I know it. If I had a second life I'd be a librettist for Broadway musicals.

The center line of science literacy - which not many people tell you, but I feel this strongly, and I will go to my grave making this point - is how you think.

I wake up and I go to work. I don't look for the cup of coffee. The universe is enough of a draw for me - to awaken me and have me bound out of bed and go to my office.

We're quite happy with our Big Bang description of cosmic origins. But actually, the Big Bang accounts for what happened only after the beginning. The beginning itself, and especially what happened before, remains the biggest mystery of all.

Thomas Jefferson basically secularized Jesus.