It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.

A friend Alan and I ended up in an Outback pub in a place called Daly Waters and apparently, he says, in the course of this very lively evening we spent there …

All that can really be said is that at some indeterminate point in the very distant past, for reasons unknown, there came the moment known to science as t = 0.…

... I had some suggestions [about fencing]. I thought that you could encourage surprise attacks. I thought that would be very good. I kind of liked the idea of…

When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I seem to be living among the gods.

The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.

Thar's only two possibilities: Thar is life out there in the universe which is smarter than we are, or we're the most intelligent life in the universe. Either …