“Scientists need to invent a way to make DNA work like in cartoons.”

“The cartoon me writes the books cartoon people read in the cartoon world, because they need things to read there too.”

“I understood that I was inventing myself, and that I was doing this more in the way of a painter than in the way of a scientist. I could not count on precision or calculation; I could only count on intuition.”

“I don't know how to describe the magnificence of Carlsbad Caverns without making it sound like a cartoon or a drug trip or a cartoon of a drug trip. The only thing I can say is that it is one of those dear places that make you love the world.”

“We're professionals. People make deals, they need to stick to them. That's the way it works, if it's going to work at all.”

“As it turns out, craft is to poetry what invention is to imagination--not antithetical, but needless. The eye does not invent the light; there's no need. The mind makes no materials; it doesn't have to. Imagination is the present state of things, and poems rejoice--in particular, in detail--that this is so. Again, the only work is trust, a trust rewarded by ease and by betterment.”