I've handed life and death back to the people who do the living and the dying.

The whole point of extravagance is to act like a fool and feel like a fool, but enjoy it.

The test of intellect is the refusal to belabor the obvious.

This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living and hard dying... but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft, pillage and rapine, culture and vice... but nobody admitted it. This was an age of extremes, a fascinating century of freaks... but nobody loved it.

The appeal of science fiction has always been its iconoclasm . . . But in order to be an iconoclast, an author must be more than merely aware of the idol he wishes to destroy. He must be intimate with it and understand it in all its aspects. This means that he must have devoted serious thought to it, and have beliefs of his own which will stand up in the place of the broken idol. In other words, any child can complain, but it takes an adult to clash with accepted beliefs . . . an adult with ideas.

Don't ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.

Life is a freak. That’s its hope and glory.