I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it.

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe.

If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

I have never written a book that didn't teach me far more than it taught my reader.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition.