“My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: So? Did you learn anything today? But not my mother. Izzy, she would...”

“Suddenly, there was an enormous flash of light, the brightest light I have ever seen or that I think anyone has ever seen. It blasted; it pounced; it bored its way into you. It was a vision which w...”

“To me, science is an expression of the human spirit, which reaches every sphere of human culture. It gives an aim and meaning to existence as well as a knowledge, understanding, love, and admiratio...”

“We must also teach science not as the bare body of fact, but more as human endeavor in its historic contextin the context of the effects of scientific thought on every kind of thought. We must teac...”

“To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.”

“art is risk made visible”

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

“The spiritual life to me has always meant just one thing: feeling.”

“since feeling is firstwho pays any attentionto the syntax of thingswill never wholly kiss you;wholly to be a foolwhile Spring is in the worldmy blood approves,and kisses are a far better fatethan w...”

“Shes kept her love for him as alive as the summer they first met. In order to do this, shes turned life away. Sometimes she subsists for days on water and air. Being the only known complex life-for...”

“A perfectly normal person is rare in our civilization.”

“Was there even such a thing as normall? People had terrible things behing their faces sometimes. He knew that now.”

“Normalcy was declared. (Normalcy was always a declaration.)”