One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.

We are all citizens of history.

[Books] will visit you at your convenience, whether you are lonesome or not, on rainy days or fair. They propose themselves as either transient acquaintances or permanent friends. They will stay as long as you like, departing or returning as you wish. Their friendship entails no obligation. Best of all, and not always true of our merely human friends, they have Cleopatra's infinite variety.

Science fiction is a kind of archaeology of the future.

Name me any liquid — except our own blood — that flows more intimately and incessantly through the labyrinth of symbols we have conceived to mark our status as human beings, from the rudest peasant festival to the mystery of the Eucharist.

A man who is careful with his palate is not likely to be careless with his paragraphs.

The only reason for being young is to outgrow it.