“I think what gets you through a small writing project, is just one burst of inspiration.”

I’m still happy with the way Einstein’s Dreams came out. That book came out of a single inspiration. I really felt like I was not creating the words, that I was hearing the words.

In a world of fixed future, life is an infinite corridor of rooms, one room lit at each moment, the next room dark but prepared.

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.

I’ve been lucky enough that I can gather all sorts of experiences and find inspiration by traveling around and by spending time with people I admire.

Don’t make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money.

When you get a poem [in a public place], it happens to you so suddenly that you don’t have time to deploy your anti-poetry deflector shields that were installed in high school.

My daughter, I can’t give up because she’s watching and she’s here and she’s waiting for me to be an example. So, between her, myself, and my will, and me pushing myself, that’s my inspiration.

My manager said the next best inspiration to heartbreak is travel, and it’s true.

It is in the ordinances of the temple that we are placed under covenant to Him….[If] we will enter into our covenants without reservation or apology, the Lord will protect us. We will receive inspiration sufficient for the challenges of life.

The people at the record company had asked me if I could write a song about my life, my relationship with God, and where I’m from.

Well, I can’t write a song on purpose, my songs come in a moment of inspiration or desperation.