I find the universe so staggering that I just don't have any faith in my ability to grasp it.

Death makes me realize how deeply I have internalized the agnosticism I preach in all my books. I consider dogmatic belief and dogmatic denial very childish forms of conceit in a world of infinitely whirling complexity. None of us can see enough from one corner of space-time to know "all" about the rest of space-time.

You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.

All phenomena are real in some sense, unreal in some sense, meaningless in some sense, real and meaningless in some sense, unreal and meaningless in some sense, and real and unreal and meaningless in some sense.

The longer one is alone, the easier it is to hear the song of the earth.

The novels that get praised in the NY Review of Books aren't worth reading. Ninety-seven percent of science fiction is adolescent rubbish, but good science fiction is the best and only literature of our times.

It is a great privilege to be conscious in this universe. Those who understand, shine like stars.