All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe.

The entire sweep of human history from the dark ages into the unknown future was considerably less important at the moment than the question of a certain girl and her feelings toward him.

The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be.

I have never grown up, but I will never stop growing.

They had not yet attained the stupefying boredom of omnipotence; their experiments did not always succeed.

You don't believe in organized religion, yet a major theme in so many of your works seems to be a quest for God.

Some dangers are so spectacular and so much beyond normal experience that the mind refuses to accept them as real, and watches the approach of doom without any sense of apprehension. The man who looks at the onrushing tidal wave, the descending avalanche, or the spinning funnel of the tornado, yet makes no attempt to flee, is not necessarily paralyzed with fright or resigned to an unavoidable fate. He may simply be unable to believe that the message of his eyes concerns him personally. It is all happening to somebody else.