The day of the android has dawned.

I have had wealth, rank and power, but, if these were all I had, how wretched I should be.

When knowledge becomes formulated into a science, then it does take on a life of it's own, often alien to the human spirit that conceived it.

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.

Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.

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

It is comparatively easy to become a writer; staying a writer, resisting formulaic work, generating ones own creativity - thats a much tougher matter.