I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled "Science Fiction" ... and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.

We have such a young culture that there is an opportunity to contribute wonderful new myths to it, which will be accepted.

Bill Gates says, 'Wait till you can see what your computer can become.' But it’s you who should be doing the becoming. What you can become is the miracle you were born to work-not the damn fool computer.

The Summer had died peacefully in its sleep, and Autumn, as soft-spoken executrix, was locking life up safely until Spring came to claim it.

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

The prostitutes worked for a pimp now. He was splendid and cruel. He was a god to them. He took their free will away from them, which was perfectly all right. They didn't want it anyway. It was as though they had surrendered themselves to Jesus, for instance, so they could live unselfishly and trustingly-except that they had surrendered to a pimp instead.

That is my principal objection to life, I think: It's too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.