Lucy Hawking, on her father:

“And as a child, you could ask any question you wanted and get a reply. I think it was my son’s eighth or ninth birthday party, and one of my son’s friends went up to my dad and said, ‘Oh, Stephen, what would happen to me if I fell in a black hole?’ And everyone was really interested and everyone waited for the answer. And my father said, ‘You’d be turned into spaghetti.’ Of course, all the kids were really thrilled and they totally understood his answer. And all the adults kind of pretended they did.”