I think if you maintain a force in the world that comes into people's sleep, you are exercising a meaningful power.

The cheesecake was smooth and lush, with the personality of a warm and well-to-do uncle who knows a hundred dirty jokes and will die of sexual exertions in the arms of his mistress.

I would never write in response to what I believe the public wanted or needed.

I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.

The smoke alarm went off in the hallway upstairs, either to let us know the battery had just died or because the house was on fire.

Do people still shoot at presidents? I thought there were more stimulating targets.' (20)

We feel certain that the extraterrestrial message is a mathematical code of some kind. Probably a number code. Mathematics is the one language we might conceivably have in common with other forms of intelligent life in the universe. As I understand it, there is no reality more independent of our perception and more true to itself than mathematical reality.