He felt a spasm of excitement because he knew instinctively who it was, or at least knew who it was he wanted it to be, and once you know what it is you want to be true, instinct is a very useful device for enabling you to know that it is.

He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

It's not the fall that kills you; it's the sudden stop at the end.

I find that writing is a constant battle with exactly the same problems you've always had.

A theory of the universe that states: If anyone finds out what the universe is for, it will disappear and be replaced by something more bizarrely inexplicable.

If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don't. It's like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don't hurt it. Not even major surgery if it's done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.

To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.