In fact, almost every job you get somebody watching you.

Vance has a genius in evoking the beauty of strangeness, the strangeness of beauty.

Notice this rent in my garment; I am at a loss to explain its presence! I am even more puzzled by the existence of the universe.

The inscrutability [of economics] is perhaps not unintentional. It gives endless employment to dialecticians who otherwise might become public charges or, at very worst, swindlers and tricksters.

A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone's written the story. He's supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment.

Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience.

There was a writer in the '20s called Christopher Morley, who I remember a little bit of, who had some influence on me, but I couldn't tell you what it was.