You no longer have much in the way of knowing what to do in a big, epic novel about the future, because nobody knows what the hell is going to happen.

And that's another piece of advice I'll give junior writers; when you get to the point where they take you to lunch, let the editor suggest where to go.

We have for years been building a society in which everybody plunders everybody, and while we are weary of being plundered, we enjoy the plunder.

You see, I used to do a certain amount of market research by going to the local drugstore and seeing what the truck drivers would put up. Now it's all just copies from the latest best-seller list and damn little of anything else.

Much of economics isn't difficult, or rather, the difficulty is in cooking up arguments to "prove" that commonsense conclusions are wrong. The fact is that many commonsense conclusions are quite correct, and it takes a lot of education to get you to believe different.

Freedom is not free. It is bought at a high price. It can be squandered cheaply.

I have a big collection of quotation programs...In particular, I like MCR Software's Wisdom of the Ages, which has the best selection of relevant quotes I know.