I realized that everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new ideas.

And what? What's the other choice? To passively let things happen and then say: "Tut-tut, what at botch that was"? Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll chose as we think they should?

I don't believe that there are aliens. I believe there are really different people.

The only process you've mastered is the process of elimination, and the only reason you've mastered that is because you can do it in the toilet.

All the common people want is to be left alone. All the ordinary soldier wants is to collect his pay and not get killed. That's why the great forces of history can be manipulated by astonishingly small groups of determined people.

Music isn't just a pleasure, a transient satisfaction. It's a need, a deep hunger; and when the music is right, it's joy. Love. A foretaste of heaven. A comfort in grief. Is it too much to think that perhaps God speaks to us sometimes through music? How, then, could I be so ungrateful as to refuse the message?

Take me home, he said silently to Graff. In my dream you said you loved me. Take me home