We're going to become the martians when we land there. When we explore and build communities, we become the martians. That's a wonderful destiny for all of us.

The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.

The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.

Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.

In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book. All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try. And no one can help me. Not even you.

Mars is empty now. Five hundred years from now, it'll be full of people.

The novel's not organized like a screenplay. If you shot the novel, you'd have a twelve-hour movie.