So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.

Way out in the country tonight he could smell the pumpkins ripening toward the knife and the triangle eye and the singeing candle.

That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want.

Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about.

My parents read the comics to me, and I fell in love with comic strips. I've collected them all of my life. I have a complete collection of all the "Buck Rogers" Sunday funnies and daily paper strips, I have all of "Prince Valiant" put away, all of "Tarzan," which appeared in the Sunday funnies in 1932 right on up through high school. So I've learned a lot from reading comics as a child.

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

You can't learn to write that way - by writing directly for the screen. Wait until you're 30. But in the meantime write 200 short stories. You've got to learn how to write!