Poverty is a relatively mild disease for even a very flimsy American soul, but uselessness will kill strong and weak souls alike, and kill every time.

I didn't know then what a sperm was, and so wouldn't understand his answer for several years. "My boy," he said, "you are descended from a long line of determined, resourceful, microscopic tadpoles-- champions every one.

Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end. It flung them like stones.

... humanity deserved to die horribly, since it had behaved so cruelly and wastefully on a planet so sweet.

Or they'll talk about fear, which we used to call politics- job politics, social politics, government politics.

I'm eighty-three and I've been smoking since I was eleven. I'm suing the cigarette company because it promised to kill me and it hasn't.

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.