“ Life is fragile: it thrives only in a narrow range of temperatures between freezing and boiling. How lucky that our planet is just the right distance from the sun: a little farther, and the death of the perpetual Antarctic winter - or worse - would prevail a little closer, and the surface would truly fry anything that touched it. ”

“ You are a victim of your own neural architecture which doesn't permit you to imagine anything outside of three dimensions. Even two dimensions. People know they can't visualise four or five dimensions, but they think they can close their eyes and see two dimensions. But they can't. ”

“ Extra dimensional theories are sometimes considered science fiction with equations. I think that's a wrong attitude. I think extra dimensions are with us, they are with us to stay, and they entered physics a long time ago. They are not going to go away. ”

“ I'm not going to argue with people about the existence of God. I have not the vaguest idea of whether the universe was created by an intelligence. ”

“ Unforeseen surprises are the rule in science, not the exception. Remember: Stuff happens. ”

“ Science to me is sufficiently weird and interesting, and stranger than fiction. ”

“ The word 'universe' is obviously not intended to have a plural, but science has evolved in such a way that we need a plural noun for something similar to what we ordinarily call our universe. ”

“ I'm afraid I am a bit of a technophobe - a nineteenth-century man caught in the twenty-first century. But there is one piece of technology that I would especially welcome: a device to automatically balance restaurant tables on all four legs so that they don't rock back and forth. ”