“If atoms are not alive and humans are made up of atoms, then humans are not alive.”
“Human orgasm, firecracker. Vampire orgasm, atomic blast.”
“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”
“Physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an attempt by an atom to understand itself.”
“There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.”
“It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.”