When I was writing Dune there was no room in my mind for concerns about the book's success or failure. I was concerned only with the writing. Six years of research had preceded the day I sat down to put the story together, and the interweaving of the many plot layers I had planned required a degree of concentration I had never before experienced.

Time is a measure of space, just as a range-finder is a measure of space, but measuring locks us into the place we measure.

I am not the kind of person I want to be.

People don't vote. Instinct tells them it's useless.

When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual.

Prisons are needed only to provide the illusion that courts and police are effective. They're a kind of job insurance.

Riots and comedy are but symptoms of the times, profoundly revealing. They betray the psychological tone, the deep uncertainties....and the striving for something better, plus the fear that nothing would come of it all.