No one can possibly have lived through the Great Depression without being scarred by it. No amount of experience since the depression can convince someone who has lived through it that the world is safe economically.

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

I'm gradually managing to cram my mind more and more full of things. I've got this beautiful mind and it's going to die, and it'll all be gone. And then I say, not in my case. Every idea I've ever had I've written down, and it's all there on paper. And I won't be gone; it'll be there.

It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.

Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else, being someone else.

Isn't it sad that you can tell people that the ozone layer is being depleted, the forests are being cut down, the deserts are advancing steadily, that the greenhouse effect will raise the sea level 200 feet, that overpopulation is choking us, that pollution is killing us, that nuclear war may destroy us - and they yawn and settle back for a comfortable nap. But tell them that the Martians are landing, and they scream and run.

Oh, for a pin that would puncture pretension!