So what is true for life itself is no less true for the universe: knowing where you came from is no less important than knowing where you are going.

If an artist is reaching for the universe as a source of creative muse, then I'm there. I'm gonna say, "Yeah. Here's Saturn. Here's a black hole. Here's twisted space-time. Talk to me. What do you need? What do you want?" And I'll just feed you, because I think only then does science become mainstream - when science becomes a legitimate topic for artists.

I'd like to live in a world where people embrace objective truths rather than be offended by them.

Here's what I'm wondering: if, digitally, you can remove red-eye, smooth over wrinkles, make people look thinner, then why don't we have the technology to make me sing better?

There are photons that have been traveling for 30,000 years, and I'm... snatching them from this journey and planting them into my digital detector. And then I started feeling bad for the photon, and I said maybe it wanted to continue but I got in its way. But then I said, no, those are probably happier photons than the one that slammed into the mountainside that will go unanalyzed and will not contribute to the depth of our understanding of the universe.

People like it when they understand something that they previously thought they couldn't understand. It's a sense of empowerment.

The most successful people recognize that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.