In his youth Albert Einstein spent a year loafing aimlessly. You don’t get anywhere by not ‘wasting’ time – something, unfortunately, which the parents of teenagers tend frequently to forget.
-- Rovelli (chapter 1 paragraph 1)

Importance: This is how Rovelli begins the book, and it is a suitable introduction to what follows. Rovelli explains the modern developments in physics and simultaneously explores related philosophical enquiries. He begins by looking at Einstein’s personal life before delving into the theory.

In quantum mechanics no object has a definite position, except when colliding headlong with something else. In order to describe it in mid-flight, between one interaction and another, we use an abstract mathematical formula which has no existence in real space, only in abstract mathematical space.
-- Rovelli (chapter 2 paragraph 5)

Importance: Rovelli describes some of the details of quantum theory. He manages to phrase the concepts such that they are accessible to many people but he has not skewed or misrepresented the...