Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

If I was ever to have a child, this is what I'd tell it: 'Child,' I'd say, 'don't never mess with time. Keep now now and then then. And if you ever get lost in thick smoke, child, set still till it clears. Set still till you can see where you are and where you been and where you're going, child.

[I write] intuitively, reflexively, as if skiing down a steep mountain slope with no time to think.

The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.

People hate it when they're tickled because laughter is not pleasant, if it goes on too long. I think it's a desperate sort of convulsion in desperate circumstances, which helps a little.

I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases.