Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug.

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.

I know nothing about sex because I was always married.

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.

All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.