“The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos.”

Writing is the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another.

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.

Science is an attempt, largely successful, to understand the world, to get a grip on things, to get hold of ourselves, to steer a safe course.

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

Our ancestors lived out of doors. They were as familiar with the night sky as most of us are with our favorite television programs.

One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.

If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.

A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used.

The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.

Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.

All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science.

You have to know the past to understand the present.

Party don’t stop. Only gets crazier when I touch down.

I think honestly when I was younger I use to love going to carnivals in Long Island. I use to love carnival season; I would drive to every town going to carnivals. That was definitely a favorite memory.

I don’t tolerate it. I don’t accept it. I fucking celebrate it – love is love.

If someone has Ebola at a cocktail party they’re contagious and you can catch it from them.

I’m not really a girl who likes to go out to lunch or cocktails or store openings.

They never ask the celebrities why they don’t wear their own clothes on the red carpet.

Writing is not a serious business. It’s a joy and a celebration. You should be having fun with it.

We are the witnesses to the miracle. We are put here by creation, by God….We’re here to be the audience to the magnificent. It is our job to celebrate.