“I have also been fascinated for a long time with the intersection of science and religion.”

The urge to discover, to invent, to know the unknown, seems so deeply human that we cannot imagine our history without it.

One cannot walk down an avenue, converse with a friend, enter a building, browse beneath the sandstone arches of an old arcade without meeting an instrument of time.

I think e-mail is representative of our fast food mentality in the United States, where everything has gotten faster and faster, and we’re required to respond to inputs more quickly with less time for thought and reflection.

The relationship between science and the humanities is two-way. Science changes our view of the world and our place in it. In the other direction, the humanities provide the store of ideas and images and language available to us in understanding the world.

Time is a rigid, bonelike structure, extending infinitely ahead and behind, fossilizing the future as well as the past.

Others hold that each decision must be considered and committed to, that without commitment there is chaos. Such people are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.

Originality is also very important to a writer. And all of the writers I’ve mentioned, of course, are original, but it’s important to me that every book that I do be really a completely fresh and new look at the world.

The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.

As a scientist, I don’t believe science will ever discover whether God exists. Nor do I believe religion will ever prove it.

Not only will two different readers get something different but so will a single reader at different points in his life.

If you told a story that was all darkness, it wouldn’t be real.

And if we can’t unplug from that machine, eventually we’re going to become mindless.

The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.

Illuminated by only the most feeble red light, for light is diminished to almost nothing at the center of time, its vibrations slowed to echoes in vast canyons, its intensity reduced to the faint glow of fireflies.

Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing by rain?

We’ve lost our way, we have lost our centeredness.

Just as traffic symbols, when driving, make us almost unconsciously aware of a steep hill, an intersection, an icy bridge etc.

City lights shine bright on my complexion, Self-reflection…red hairs flashing at the intersection. Life is a green light, one star, no script, Supporting actors…fresh peaches, no pit.