The sole virtue of losing your short-term memory is that it does free you to be your own editor.

The greater the power of any subjective state, the more total is a Romantic's assumption that everyone understands exactly what he is about to do, therefore waste not a moment by stopping to tell them.

One thing I've learned in all these years is not to make love when you really don't feel it; there's probably nothing worse you can do to yourself than that.

I always start a book for money. If you're married five times you have to.

Armstrong, sitting in the commander's seat, spacesuit on, helmet on, plugged into electrical and environmental umbilical's, is a man who is not only a machine himself in the links of these networks, but is also a man sitting in (what Collins is later to call) a 'mini-cathedral.' a man somewhat more than a pilot, somewhat more than a superpilot, is in fact a veritable high priest of the forces of society and scientific history concentrated in that mini cathedral, a general of the church of the forces of technology.

I don't trust compliments. I've been getting them for years. Sometimes I deserve them, sometimes I didn't. But generally when people give you compliments there's one of two things wrong with them. Either they're false, or what's worse is they're sincere. They really mean the compliment. And then they're offering you their loyalty. And I'm kind of a stingy... Well, I don't necessarily want to give all that loyalty back. So either way, let's skip the compliments.

I take it for granted that there's a side of me that loves public action, and there's another side of me that really wants to be alone and work and write. And I've learned to alternate the two as matters develop.