And every friend I've got has been writing Mars stories. It was pretty clear I'd never catch up.

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

SF isn't a genre; SF is the matrix in which genres are embedded, and because the SF field is never going in any one direction at any one time, there is hardly a way to cut it off.

I'd repair our education system or replace it with something that works.

There had been a popular joke on Freedom, started by a man named Calder. Looking down from space, he had said, the dominant life forms on Earth were obviously the cereals and other grasses. They occupied all the most desirable and fertile land; and they had tamed insects and animals to care for them. In particular, they had domesticated the bipeds to nurture and cultivate them and to save and plant their seed. Now, watching the farmers, Alex could easily imagine that they were worshiping and genuflecting before their masters.

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.

I never got good at predicting what millions of people will suddenly decide is rational.