Why this reluctance to make the change? We fear the process of reeducation.

I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing-to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics-Well, they can do whatever they wish.

... you just can't differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.

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

Surely, if we take on thinking partners - or, at the least, thinking servants - in the form of machines, we will be more comfortable with them, and will relate to them more easily, if they are shaped like humans. It will be easier to be friends with human-shaped robots than with specialized machines of unrecognizable shape. And I sometimes think that, in the desperate straits of humanity today, we would be grateful to have nonhuman friends, even if they are only the friends we build ourselves.

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

I never considered myself a patriot. I like to think I recognize only humanity as my nation.