“Assessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling in the dark with an unknown opponent.”

“... things are the way they are in our universe because if they Weren't, we would not be here to notice.”

“My dad was a composer and a musician, but he never finished high school. His formal education was rather minimal from the standards of today's college graduates and Ph.D.'s, but he had a deep interest in questions of science and questions of the universe.”

“When you buy a jacket, you pick the size to ensure it fits. Similarly, we live in a universe in which the amount of dark energy fits our biological make-up. If the amount of dark energy were substantially different from what we've measured, the environmental conditions would be inhospitable to our form of life.”

“Nature's patterns sometimes reflect two intertwined features: fundamental physical laws and environmental influences. It's nature's version of nature versus nurture.”

“When you drive your car, E = mc2 is at work. As the engine burns gasoline to produce energy in the form of motion, it does so by converting some of the gasoline's mass into energy, in accord with Einstein's formula.”

“My mom says: 'Why aren't you a doctor?' and I'm like, 'I am a doctor!' and she's all, 'No, I mean a real doctor.' She reads my books, but she says they give her a headache.”

“The bottom line is that time travel is allowed by the laws of physics.”

“I believe the process of going from confusion to understanding is a precious, even emotional, experience that can be the foundation of self-confidence.”

“Intelligence is the ability to take in information from the world and to find patterns in that information that allow you to organize your perceptions and understand the external world.”

“Science is a self-correcting discipline that can, in subsequent generations, show that previous ideas were not correct.”