If it weren't for the people always getting tangled up with the machinery... Earth would be an engineer's paradise.

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.

It's the writer's job to stage confrontations, so the characters will say surprising and revealing things, and educate and entertain us all.

Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes.

If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings," said the Tralfamadorian, "I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by 'free will.' I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.

I chose cultural anthropology, since it offered the greatest opportunity to write high-minded balderdash.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.