From this outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living. Did all dying people feel this way, as if they had never lived? Did life seem that short, indeed, over and done before you took a breath? Did it seem this abrupt and impossible to everyone, or only to himself, here, now, with a few hours left to him for thought and deliberation?

There is no future for e-books, because they are not books. E-books smell like burned fuel.

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.

Why then you're as mad as me. No, madder. For I distrust 'reality' and its moron mother, the universe, while you fasten your innocence to fallible devices which pretend at happy endings.

Find out what your hero or heroine wants, and when he or she wakes up in the morning, just follow him or her all day.

It's lack that gives us inspiration. It's not fullness.

When rivers flooded, when fire fell from the sky, what a fine place the library was, the many rooms, the books. With luck, no one found you. How could they!--when you were off to Tanganyika in '98, Cairo in 1812, Florence in 1492!?