Animals don't even try to look any different from what nature intended. They humbly wear their shells, scales, spines, plumes, pelts, and down. ... The conscious impulse to change one's appearance is found only among humans.

Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don't like to joke.

I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.

I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.

Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.

We're extremely fortunate not to know precisely the kind of world we live in. One would have to live a long, long time, unquestionably longer than the world itself.

You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.