Science is not about control. It is about cultivating a perpetual condition of wonder in the face of something that forever grows one step richer and subtler than our latest theory about it. It is about reverence, not mastery.

Science is not about control. It is about cultivating a perpetual condition of wonder in the face of something that forever grows one step richer and subtler than our latest theory about it. It is about reverence, not mastery.

I don't mind arguing with myself. It's when I lose that it bothers me.

A book is still atemporal. It is you, in silence, hearing voices in your head, unfolding at a time that has nothing to do with the timescale of reading. And for the hours that we retreat into this moratorium, with the last form of private and silent human activity that isn't considered pathological, we are outside of time.

All the different ways we know the world all come from the brain, and they all depend on each other to make sense.

For me, university was just awful because it was closing one door after the other of all these candy shops of professional possibilities.

I keep a quotes journal - of every sentence that I've wanted to remember from my reading of the past 30 years.

I like to travel and connect.

I really like science because it seems to be that place where you get the big picture, everything connects.

I think that if the novel's task is to describe where we find ourselves and how we live now, the novelist must take a good, hard look at the most central facts of contemporary life - technology and science.

I used to work for 12 or 14 hours at a time but the digital age has made such happy immersions almost impossible.

I would say the flip side to my fascination with systems is a fascination with components. So many of my books are dialogues between little and big.

I write the way you might arrange flowers. Not every try works, but each one launches another. Every constraint, even dullness, frees up a new design.

I'd like, each time out as a writer, to reinvent who I am and what I'm doing. That's one of the great pleasures and rewards of the occupation.

My dream has always been to suspend myself in space when I write, and lying horizontal in bed is the closest to doing that.

My goal for technology has always been to reach a point where the technological mediation becomes invisible.

Novel-writing is the only place where someone who would have liked to do anything can still do that vicariously.

Only white men have the luxury of ignoring race.

Out of grad school, I worked as a tech writer for a while before going into computer coding for a living.

Reading is the last act of secular prayer.

The Midwest is such a tabula rasa.

The desire to live in our imagination is driven by this suspicion that we're disembodied sensibilities cobbled into our bodies. That idea has infused most of human thought since the very beginning.

The thing that makes reading and writing suspect in the eyes of the market economy is that it's not corrupted.

This idea that a book can either be about character and feeling, or about politics and idea, is just a false binary. Ideas are an expression of the feelings and the intense emotions we hold about the world.

Until I was 42, I could fit everything that I owned into two suitcases.

We build our technologies as a way of addressing all our anxieties and desires. They are our passions congealed into these prosthetic extensions of ourselves. And they do it in a way that reflects what we dream ourselves capable of doing.

We will live with racism for ever. But senses of self, senses of belonging, senses of us and of others? Those are up for grabs.

This idea that a book can either be about character and feeling or about politics and idea is just a false binary. Ideas are an expression of the feelings and the intense emotions we hold about the world.

Wed drifted too far to rely on the old boyhood telepathy anymore.

Information may travel at light speed, but meaning spreads at the speed of dark.

Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind.

The oldest principle of composition: repeat everything.

I also do not like the idea of soft money, these issue ads - people don't know where the money is coming from, millions and millions of dollars outside of the control of a candidate - there's no accountability.

George Pal had total control, and he was there on the set every day. You never met a more charming man in your entire lifetime - what a lovely gentleman.

This means that to entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.

In a theater, the part is mine and I can control it as I want to. In the movies, I don't have direct contact, and I am fighting technical machinery.

Plan Colombia was supposed to reduce Colombia's cultivation and distribution of drugs by 50 percent, but 6 years and $4.7 billion later, the drug control results are meager at best.

Control of vibrato helps your musical expression.

Is anarchism desirable? Well, who does not seek freedom? What man, unless willing to declare himself in bondage, would care to call any control agreeable? Think about it!

The transfer is a monumental occasion as the Iraqi people take control of their government and their future and forge ahead with creating a society governed by the tenets of life, liberty and freedom.

Let's say there are 500 sons and daughters like you in each state. Then we could control the government.

Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talks of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.

This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.

I love making people laugh. It's an addiction and it's probably dysfunctional, but I am addicted to it and there's no greater pleasure for me than sitting in a theater and feeling a lot of people losing control of themselves.

It's frustrating not to have more control over your material.

This is the law of God by which He makes His way known to man and is paramount to all human control.

I'm very excited to see where the characters and their relationships go. But in the end, it really boils down to the people who have more power than me, who control the money.

Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.

But in a broader sense, when I have more control, I want to expose people to new ideas.