When I came to Berkeley, I met all these Nobel laureates and I got to know that they were regular people. They were very smart and very motivated and worked very hard, but they were still humans, whereas before they were kind of mythical creatures to me.

I always think of space-time as being the real substance of space, and the galaxies and the stars just like the foam on the ocean.

With something like Chernobyl, the public reaction was 'Oh, my God, science has really done wrong.'

Both my parents instilled an interest in science and mathematics.

You won't see me writing about particle physics, or even planetary geology, or chemistry. I practically failed chemistry, and if I had to write a book in any of those areas, I don't think it would go well.

In the courtroom of science, if you have the facts on your side, you don't need a gun - and juries would be well advised to distrust the case of those parties who choose to use weapons to silence adversarial witnesses.

Language, philosophy, and science are interwoven into the design of words, which are manipulated to create surprising illusions.

I am uneasy about having scientific exploration depend on profit-making companies.