"Of course, it is possible that alien beings travel billions of miles to amuse themselves by planting crop circles in Wiltshire or frightening the daylights out of some poor guy in a pickup truck on a lonely road in Arizona (they must have teenagers, after all), but it does seem unlikely." Part 1, Chapter 2, pg. 27

" 'I just seem to have a knack for memorizing star fields,'[Robert Evans] told me, with a frankly apologetic look, when I visited him and his wife, Elaine, in their picture-book bungalow on a tranquil edge of the village of Hazelbrook, out where Sydney finally ends and the boundless Australian bush begins. 'I'm not particularly good at other things,' he added. 'I don't remember names well.'

'Or where he's put things,' called Elaine from the kitchen." Part 1, Chapter 3, pg. 30

"The first [of Albert Einstein's 1905 papers] won its author a Nobel...