Early to bed and early to rise," Mazer intoned, "makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.

The difference between science fiction and fantasy … is simply this: science fiction has rivets and fantasy has trees.

With life. Rooter says that life is how God gives purpose to the universe.

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing.

Truth, when we are fortunate enough to find it, is like bad-tasting medicine. It rarely comes as a pleasant surprise, because if it surprises us, it means we've been denying it for some time and have a lot of beliefs based on falsehood. It's hard to give up those beliefs.

Civilisation is only a pretense. In crisis we have become mere apes again, forgetting the rational biped of our pretensions and instead becoming the hairy primate at the mouth of the cave, screeching at the enemy wishing it would go away, fingering the heavy stone we will use the moment it comes close enough

There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.