“As both a scientist and a humanist myself, I have struggled to understand different claims to knowledge, and I have eventually come to a formulation of the kind of religious belief that would, in my view, be compatible with science.”

Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.

We have become disembodied. By being always somewhere else we are nowhere.

In restaurants, walking, they have cell phones clamped to their to heads.

No one knows the nature of God, or even if God exists. In a sense, all of our religions are literary works of the imagination.

Body time flows at its own variable rate, oblivious to the most precise hydrogen master clocks in the laboratory. In fact, the human body contains its own exquisite time-pieces, all with their separate rhythms.

That’s an exciting thing. In a class of fifteen there are usually two very good writers, equal to good student writers anywhere in the country. Those two make the class wonderful.

In a world in which time is a circle, every handshake, every kiss, every birth, every word, will be repeated precisely.

A world in which time is absolute is a world of consolation.

That’s the fine balance of a fiction writer…to be able to give your characters enough freedom to surprise you and yet still maintain some kind of artistic control.

Oh, love is very much a physical thing…. I realize that it’s very complicated, and I’m sure it can’t be traced to individual neurons and hormones, but I think it’s very much a physiological sensation that takes place in the brain.

I am spellbound by the plays of Shakespeare. And I am spellbound by the second law of thermodynamics.

The great ideas in science, like the Cro-Magnon paintings and the plays of Shakespeare, are part of our cultural heritage.

We’re plugged in 24 hours a day now. We’re all part of one big machine, whether we are conscious of that or not.

We have a house on a very tiny island in Maine. Which is really my spiritual center. We’ve been going there for ten years, and it has no ferry service, no bridges, no telephone service. It’s really isolated.

I have a number of vague ideas where I just have the core or kernel of the idea. I feel like I need some time for my mind to fill up again. I feel empty. Right now.

I love staying in written correspondence with some writers. That’s enough for me.

Alfred Nobel regretted that his invention, dynamite, was converted to degrading use, hence his creation of the Nobel Prize, as the humanist counter to the destructive power of his genius.