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. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Literature is the bridge between cultures, a way to understand the other without judgment.

The most beautiful thing in mathematics is the simplicity of the ideas behind the complexity.

It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.

If you can't explain your chemistry to a non-scientist, you don't understand it well enough.