“It’s the journeyto get there. It’s a way of thinking and it’s an intellectual curiosity, a desire to know how the world works, and to know what the fundamental principles of the world are, and to know our place in it.”

He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back?

You’ve made something grand, but it will be grander if it has feeling and beauty and harmony.

I certainly believe there are forces bigger than ourselves, and that we should be searching, individually, for meaning in our lives. But I don’t believe there’s a supreme being, an intelligence that created everything.

Science is an intellectual journey, and to me, it’s not the destination.

Some make light of decisions, arguing that all possible decisions will occur. In such a world, how could one be responsible for his actions?

We live in a highly polarized society. We need to try to understand each other in respectful ways.

We often do not see what we do not expect to see.

The target of power is more interesting than its quantity.

Scientists will forever have to live with the fact that their product is, in the end, impersonal.

Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing of rain?

We don’t have the time, literally, to think during the day. To listen to ourselves think. To think about where we are going, who we are, what’s important.

Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea.

We walk from room to room, look into the room that is lit, the present moment, then walk on. We do not know the rooms ahead, but we know we cannot change them. We are spectators of our lives.

Everyone shares the same fate.

Their predictions become postdictions- Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic.

And beyond any particular clock, a vast scaffold of time, stretching across the universe, lays down the law of time equally for all.

Would Rob Gagnon and other people make as big a deal about that as they are with this? I don’t think so.

I think we can all use a little bit of counseling on planet earth today. But when it comes to reparative therapy.

Think of mission like the paddles of a defibrillator applied to the chest of a dying church.

I don’t think it’s possible for the Fed to end its easy-money policies in a trouble-free manner.

I think the most fun I ever had was playing King Arthur in Spamalot on the West End.

I think that of my 21 symphonies, each has its own place.

I think American actors are much more intimidated by Shakespeare.

I think we have to do a better job than we’ve done. So I do think there is, people rush to judgment and rush to clarify their point on this issue in ways that they don’t’ rush to judgment and to clarity on other issues.