It was only the other night everything was fine and the next thing I know Im drowning. How many times can a man go down and still be alive? I can't breathe

The reason I shift gears constantly, why I'm doing an opera, why I've done essays, why I've written poetry for years that nobody wanted, why I do short stories and novels and screenplays... is so I will have new ways of failing. This means becoming a student again.

It doesn't matter what you do...so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.

When you grow up in science fiction you grow up in everything! It's the greatest and only field worth growing up in. It's the total field.

I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.

Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them.

It's not going to do any good to land on Mars if we're stupid.