And they were all, when their souls grew warm, poets.

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.

He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.

And some day well remember so much that well build the biggest goddam steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up.

I define science fiction as the art of the possible. Fantasy is the art of the impossible. Science fiction, again, is the history of ideas, and they're always ideas that work themselves out and become real and happen in the world. And fantasy comes along and says, 'We're going to break all the laws of physics.' ... Most people don't realize it, but the series of films which have made more money than any other series of films in the history of the universe is the James Bond series. They're all science fiction, too - romantic, adventurous, frivolous, fantastic science fiction!

Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go.

Do what you love, don't do anything else.