"We are all, each in our own way, seekers of the truth and we each long for an answer to why we are here. As we collectively scale the mountain of explanation, each generation stands firmly on the shoulders of the previous, bravely reaching for the peak."

An enthusiastically optimistic quotation to take us to the end of the book, Greene shares with the reader some of the excitement arising from this new breakthrough in theoretical physics (string theory), and seeks to justify the motivation for him and for all scientists to conduct research. The human mind functions properly only when there is a goal in sight, and when there is support beneath. The greatest weapon mankind harbors against the absurd, the unknown is self-persuasion, the ability to narrow the concentration and to grasp at whatever elegant, logical hope it can find in this universe.