I think a scientist's job is to explore the Universe, to explore the cosmos around us. People always want to know - why is that useful? Well, on just pure fundamental grounds, on some level it's like art, it's like umm, music, it's aesthetics, it's like philosophy. You want to know where you are in the Universe.

I don't even really know what the big bang is, and so when people want to go through and say, 'Well, I believe that the universe started by God starting it,' that's fine by me.

I am an astronomer, and my job is to look to the heavens to better understand the universe and our place in it.

I have been described by one of my colleagues as a 'militant agnostic' with my tagline, 'I don't know, and neither do you!' I take this hard-line, fence-sitting position because it is the only position consistent with both my scientific ethos and my conscience.

The thing that upsets me is the ubiquitous use of reward technology, which uses our evolutionary biology against us.

You don't have money, you can't do science. But that's part of the price that I pay.

My only incentive is to write music that changes me, where the process of making it is a discovery and is true in some way, at that moment.

My desire to be a physician had a lot to do with that sense of medicine as a ministry of healing, not just a science. And not even just a science and an art, but also a calling, also a ministry.