We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.

Man is about to be deprived of a great pole - work routine. The nightmare of capitalist society is unemployment; the nightmare of cybernetic society will be employment.

We can sometimes recognize the looks of a century ago on a modern face; but never those of a century to come.

To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape.

It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.

It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me.

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.