What five books would I like to be remembered for? Well... Tau Zero, I like that one especially. It was somewhat of a tour de force, and I think it got across what I was trying for.

Heaven is not as narrowly literal-minded as hell.

Why do people in this age think their own impoverished lives must be the norm of the universe?

Let us settle down to the serious business of getting drunk.

I wrote the first book, Harvest of Stars, and as I was writing it, I saw that certain implications had barely been touched on... It's perfectly obvious that two completely revolutionary things are going on, with cybernetics, and biological science.

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.

So much American science fiction is parochial - not as true now as it was years ago, but the assumption is one culture in the future, more or less like ours, and with the same ideals, the same notions of how to do things, just bigger and flashier technology. Well, you know darn well it doesn't work that way.