[O]ur ignorance of microscopic physics stands as a veil, obscuring our view of the very beginning.

In the beginning there was an explosion. Not an explosion like those familiar on earth, starting from a definite center and spreading out to engulf more and more of the circumambient air, but an explosion which occurred simultaneously everywhere, filling all space from the beginning, with every particle of matter rushing apart from every other particle.
“All space” in this context may mean either all of an infinite universe, or all of a finite universe which curves back on itself like the surface of a sphere. Neither possibility is easy to comprehend, but this will not get in our way; it matters hardly at all in the early universe whether space is finite or infinite.

They (C-Y manifolds) are the DNA of string theory.

[W]e need a form of [quantum theory] that does not assume the existence of any classical background geometry for space. Loop quantum gravity is an example of such a theory.

The universe is made of processes, not things.

When we look on a small enough scale, we see that space is made of things that we can count.

When we have it, the quantum theory of gravity will provide new answers to the questions of what space and time are.

The problem is that in all the usual interpretations of quantum theory the observer is assumed to be outside the system. That cannot be so in cosmology.

[I]f space really has a discrete atomic structure, then it is extraordinarily improbable that it would have the completely smooth and regular arrangement we observe it to have.