In their pretty paintings [Monet and Renoir and Degas] wanted to describe the fleeting photons absorbed by the eye, to describe nature entirely in terms of its illumination.

Scientists, more often than not, are people …

[T]he universe is the answer, but damned if we know the question.

We can try to imagine the pre-Big Bang universe: timeless, featureless, but in some unimaginable way beholden to the laws of physics.

Democritus: Have you seen anything inside quarks?
Mercedes: [shaking her head, smiling] As far as we can tell, quarks and leptons are as good an approximation to points as you can get.
Democritus: [jumping up and down, clapping, laughing hysterically] Atomos! Finally.

The laws of nature must have existed before even time began in order for the beginning to happen.

The universe is what it is because it was what it was.

In Hollywood anything can happen, anything at all.

So passed a day in the life of a P.I.