Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

In the quest to understand quantum gravity, we are like children playing on the shore of a vast ocean, occasionally finding a smooth pebble or a pretty shell, while the great ocean of truth lies undiscovered before us.

I'm not a person who likes to be like everyone else.