I don't talk things, sir. I talk the meaning of things.

What do you do, go around trying everything once?' he asked. 'Sometimes twice.

Not to write, for many of us, is to die.

Beer's intellectual. What a shame so many idiots drink it.

I don't like realism. We already know the real facts about li[fe], most of the basic facts. I'm not interested in repeating what we already know. We know about sex, about violence, about murder, about war. All these things, by the time we're 18, we're up to here. From there on we need interpreters. We need poets. We need philosophers. We need theologians, who take the same basic facts and work with them and help us make do with those facts. Facts alone are not enough. It's interpretation.

I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal.

Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.