Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it's in Hamburger Technology.

Philosophers are divided on the question of whether the narrative therein unfolded [the Crossman Diaries] is grippingly boring or boringly gripping.

Jack Aubrey is a tremendous tower of strength and you always want to read about him.

Dinner was meat - not hunks of meat, as in Australia, but pathetic scraps of meat, as in Britain - which the girls upstairs transformed into edible dishes by heating it in secret ways and adding bits of stuff to it.

First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.

Young men especially - I don't know if young women feel much the same - but young men think they are immortal, automatically. They have no idea of time because they have so much energy and I was like that.

Even in moments of tranquility, Murray Walker sounds like a man whose trousers are on fire.