My problem with new writers is that it takes me five or six years to memorise the right names.

I am trying to prevent a bloodbath. Is that clear enough for you? I'm trying to prevent a civil war that could kill half the people in this world.

The best advice I was ever given was on my twenty-first birthday when my father said, Son, here's a million dollars. Don't lose it.

As for AIDS, it's a plague. We are human, we get plagues. They come along every so often, kill off two thirds of the population; in the next generation it's a quarter; after that it's a childhood disease.

In challenging a kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap.

I've spent a lot of my life among people brighter than myself.

I'm not predicting; I just love playing with superconductors.