The universe is a gathering of nows that I spread before my feet like a landscape.

Such is the dilemma of the atheist. Who to thank? It’s a terrible condition, to feel one’s heart swelling with the wonders of our world and yet have nobody to thank for it. It makes a man feel thwarted.

Why doesn’t anyone go to the moon anymore? What happened to our optimism?

I learned that adults were not soaring gods, but rather back-yard birds with broken wingtips.When you are thirteen, about to free-fall into the real world, discovering the broken wingtips is terrifying.

Blessing Number One. Thank you for getting old because it means you are getting to live.

Was the dementia of old age a blessing in disguise? No more thoughts. No more damage inflicted. No more memories of damage survived.

I’ve always felt sorry for Mike Collins, driving all the way to the moon but not allowed out of the car to look around.

If I had a wish it would be this: that Google maps could take me, not to just anywhere on the planet, but to anywhere in time.