He who truly believes he has a hangover has no hangover.

Only a world without love strikes me as instantly and decisively more terrible than one without music.

Sex is a momentary itch, love never lets you go.

Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means ... the need to be left. I am driven to grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.

[Science fiction is] that class of prose narrative treating of a situation that could not arise in the world we know, but which is hypothesised on the basis of some innovation in science or technology, or pseudo-science or pseudo-technology, whether human or extra-terrestrial in origin. It is distinguished from pure fantasy by its need to achieve verisimilitude and win the 'willing suspension of disbelief' through scientific plausibility.

Self criticism must be my guide to action, and the first rule for its employment is that in itself it is not a virtue, only a procedure.

Doing what you wanted to do was the only training, and the only preliminary, needed for doing more of what you wanted to do.