When asked for advice by beginners. Know your ending, I say, or the river of your story may finally sink into the desert sands and never reach the sea.

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

I don't believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.

What lasts in the reader's mind is not the phrase but the effect the phrase created: laughter, tears, pain, joy. If the phrase is not affecting the reader, what's it doing there? Make it do its job or cut it without mercy or remorse.

A fire-eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself.

[Social] science fiction is that branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance on human beings.

This idea [standardized time zones] was first advanced and fought for by Sandford Fleming of Canada and Charles F. Dowd of the United States. I mention them chiefly because like so many benefactors of mankind they have been rewarded by total obscurity.