There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.

Nowhere in space will we rest our eyes upon the familiar shapes of trees and plants, or any of the animals that share our world. Whatsoever life we meet will be as strange and alien as the nightmare creatures of the ocean abyss, or of the insect empire whose horrors are normally hidden from us by their microscopic scale.

Some things have eternal value, and compassion is one of them. I hope we never lose that. Compassion for humans as well as animals.

Look, whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.) Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

If man survives for as long as the least successful of the dinosaurs-those creatures whom we often deride as nature's failures-then we may be certain of this: for all but a vanishingly brief instant near the dawn of history, the word 'ship' will mean- 'spaceship.'

Open the pod bay doors, Hal.

A precondition for being a science fiction writer other than an interest in the future is that, an interest - at least an understanding of science, not necessarily a science degree but you must have a feeling for the science and its possibilities and its impossibilities, otherwise you're writing fantasy. Now, fantasy is also fine, but there is a distinction, although no one's ever been able to say just where the dividing lines come.