You know what the doctor said to me to cheer me up?" Fat said. "There are worse diseases than cancer." "Did he show you slides?" We both laughed. When you are nearly crazy with grief, you laugh at what you can.

Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying.

The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change... and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real.

The real origin of science fiction lay in the seventeeth-century novels of exploration in fabulous lands. Therefore Jules Verne's story of travel to the moon is not science fiction because they go by rocket but because of where they go. It would be as much science fiction if they went by rubber band.

Death hides within every religion. And at any time it can flash forth-not with healing in its wings but with poison, with that which wounds.

When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things. ... I must be scientific.

Guilt -- if there was any guilt -- spread out and diffused itself over everybody and everything. . . . Perhaps at some point in time, at some spot in the world, a moment of responsibility existed.