When you are young, you enjoy a sustained illusion that sooner or later something marvelous is going to happen, that you are going to transcend your parents' limitations.

My briefest ever definition of science fiction is 'Hubris clobbered by Nemesis.'

The fatal error of much science fiction has been to subscribe to an optimism based on the idea that revolution, or a new gimmick, or a bunch of strong men, or an invasion of aliens, or the conquest of other planets, or the annihilation of half the world--in short, pretty nearly anything but the facing up to the integral and irredeemable nature of mankind--can bring about utopian situations. It is the old error of the externalization of evil.

The misfortune of a young man who returns to his native land after years away is that he finds his native land foreign; whereas the lands he left behind remain for ever like a mirage in his mind. However, misfortune can itself sow seeds of creativity. ---- Afterword to "Hothouse" Brian Aldiss

Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.

It is at night... that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull.

A writer should say to himself, not, How can I get more money?, but How can I reach more readers (without lowering standards)?