I’d like to be the last person alive in the world! Yes, I’d like to know what happens.

Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.

The world has not yet reached the point which, in my view, is an essential condition for the survival of our human species: access by all the peoples to the material resources of this planet.

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.

It is better to be alone than in bad company.

Luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it.

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

I don’t like being alone.

Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.

What prevails in every corner of this globalized world is the real struggle of our species for its own survival.

Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don’t let yourself believe it will happen to you.

An intellectual is a person who’s found one thing that’s more interesting than sex.

They say cats have nine lives. I’ve had 12 already and I don’t know how many more I’ll have.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

If a subject excites us, if it stirs our deepest curiosity, or if we have to learn because the stakes are high, we pay much more attention. What we absorb sinks in.

The land created me. I’m wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I’m more at home in the vacant lots.

I’m an introvert… I love being by myself, love being outdoors, love taking a long walk with my dogs and looking at the trees, flowers, the sky.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

At school I pretended I had a normal life, but I felt lonely all the time and different from everyone else. I never felt like I fit in, and I wasn’t allowed to participate in after-school activities, go to sports events or parties or date boys. Many times I had to make up stories about why I couldn’t do anything with my classmates.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

When I’m ready to fight, my opponent has a better chance of surviving a forest fire wearing gasoline drawers.

Keeping an active mind has been vital to my survival, as has been maintaining a sense of humor.

Touch a scientist and you touch a child.

Life could be wonderful if people would leave you alone.

Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.

What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, the good fight with its victories and defeats.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you’re forced back on your own imagination.

Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.

I love trying new things.

One of the very important characteristics of a student is to question. Let the students ask questions.

I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone.

In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.

Children astound me with their inquisitive minds. The world is wide and mysterious to them, and as they piece together the puzzle of life, they ask ‚Why?‘ ceaselessly.

Certainly it is valuable to a trained writer to crash in an aircraft which burns. He learns several important things very quickly. Whether they will be of use to him is conditioned by survival. Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer.

The more I grow in popularity, the lonelier it gets. Because you don’t really know me. You just know this part of me. You fell in love with that. But it’s way more intricate than what meets the surface.

This is a ruthless world and one must be ruthless to cope with it.

Many admire, few know.

I owe my solitude to other people.

There’s love, and certainly children you care about more than yourself. But nevertheless, we’re alone in our heads.

I restore myself when I’m alone.

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they were found because it was possible to find them.

I’ve been called a recluse. There’s definitely truth in that. I like to spend time alone.

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

Understanding science and pushing the boundaries of science is what makes me immensely satisfied.

Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.

I’m astounded by people who want to ‚know‘ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.

The age in which we live, this non-stop distraction, is making it more impossible for the young generation to ever have the curiosity or discipline… because you need to be alone to find out anything.

It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.

I have to be alone very often. I’d be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel.

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.