Janna Levin quotes:

I would say the connection between art and science is very tenuous for me. It's just that I'm interested in both. I don't think that my interest in art affects the kind of science that I do.

We have never observed infinity in nature. Whenever you have infinities in a theory, that's where the theory fails as a description of nature. And if space was born in the Big Bang, yet is infinite now, we are forced to believe that it's instantaneously, infinitely big. It seems absurd.

Topology and number theory are my faves.

I don't believe that math and nature respond to democracy. Just because very clever people have rejected the role of the infinite, their collective opinions, however weighty, won't persuade mother nature to alter her ways. Nature is never wrong.

Black holes can bang against space-time as mallets on a drum and have a very characteristic song.

Ambiguity is very interesting in writing; it's not very interesting in science.

The simpler the insight, the more profound the conclusion.

I'd like to convince you that the universe has a soundtrack and that soundtrack is played on space itself, because space can wobble like a drum.

Now, our Sun will not collapse to a black hole. It's actually not massive enough.

What we see of the universe is vast. We know that the universe is something like 90 billion light-years across.

Forever is a very long time, especially the bit towards the end.

I think there's a certain lyricism in the telling of a scientific story.

To see some truths you must stand outside and look in.

There are faint stars in the night sky that you can see, but only if you look to the side of where they shine. They burn too weakly or are too far away to be seen directly, even if you stare. But you can see them out of the corner of your eye because the cells on the periphery of your retina are more sensitive to light. Maybe truth is just like that. You can see it, but only out of the corner of your eye.

It would be kind of magical if we were just happening to be able to see right to some boundary and then something crazy happened beyond that, like galaxies ceased to exist. I mean, that just seems nuts.

Sam Harris fearlessly describes a moral and intellectual emergency precipitated by religious fantasies--misguided beliefs that create suffering, that rationalize violence, that have endangered our nation and our future. His argument for the morality, the honesty, and the humility of atheism is galvanizing. It is a relief that someone has spoken so frankly, with such passion yet such rationality. Now when the subject arises, as it inevitably does, I can simply say: Read Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation.