I don’t like anything that’s got to be. I want to know why.

The age of the pulp magazine was the last in which youngsters, to get their primitive material, were forced to be literate.

I would argue that a truly developed country would be beyond Presidents and Kings. In a world with some semblance of equality, each liberal-minded woman, each gay person, and indeed almost every person could be their own President. In a world of equals, what real service does a ruler provide?

Why is it, I wonder, that anyone who displays superior athletic ability is an object of admiration to his classmates, while one who displays superior mental ability is an object of hatred?

God, how that stings! I've spent a lifetime loving science fiction and now I find that you must expect nothing of something that's just science fiction.

Self-education is a continuing source of pleasure to me, for the more I know, the fuller my life is and the better I appreciate my own existence

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.