Science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle.

You're not like the others. I've seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. When I said something about the moon, you looked at the moon, last night. The others would never do that. The others would walk off and leave me talking. Or threaten me. No one has time any more for anyone else. You're one of the few who put up with me. That's why I think it's so strange you're a fireman, it just doesn't seem right for you, somehow.

How working for the wrong motives poisons our creativity and warps our ideas of success and failure.

I have four daughters and eight grandchildren. My soul lives on in them. That's immortality. That's the only immortality I care about.

Those who don't build must burn.

From this outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living. Did all dying people feel this way, as if they had never lived? Did life seem that short, indeed, over and done before you took a breath? Did it seem this abrupt and impossible to everyone, or only to himself, here, now, with a few hours left to him for thought and deliberation?

His flesh took paleness from his bones.