Through lack of education, we're not teaching kids to read and write. So there is the danger that you raise up a generation of morons.

Everything of mine is permeated with my love of ideas-both big and small. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it grabs me and holds me, facinates me. And then I'll run out and something about it... I write for fun.

He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out.

He says I'm a regular onion! I keep him busy peeling away the layers.

The history of science fiction started in the caves 20,000 years ago. The ideas on the walls of the cave were problems to be solved. It's problem solving. Primitive scientific knowledge, primitive dreams, primitive blueprinting: to solve problems.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

A conglomerate heap of trash, that's what I am. But it burns with a high flame.