I'd rather enjoy the money, and then be buried, offering my body back to the flora and fauna of which I have dined my whole life.

I want and need the artist to take me to new places, and the new place that Van Gogh took me not the sky as it is but the sky as he felt it. And the more of us that feel the universe, the better off we will be in this world.

God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.

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.

My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another.

For your own safety, do not ever tell an astrophysicist, I hope all your stars are twinkling.

Pop culture is the scaffold we all carry around with us.