First grade is very cheap. It's the later grades where you have to spend a lot of money if you don't do it right.

There's a lot of crap out there. Most of the science fiction films alone are abominations, you know. They're mindless. So you can't learn from those kinds of films.

Do you ever read any of the books you burn?" He laughed. "That's against the law!" "Oh. Of course.

You learn to live with your crazy enthusiasms which nobody else shares, and then you find a few other nuts like yourself, and they're your friends for a lifetime. That's what friends are, the people who share your crazy outlook and protect you from the world, because nobody else is going to give a damn what you're doing, so you need a few other people like yourself.

In my later years I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I've worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating, by them. Yet if I were asked to name the most important items in a writer's make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road he wants to go. I would only warn him to look to his zest, see to his gusto.

We're a free society; we've got television. We have radio. We have newspapers. We have the videocassette, which is coming into play. These are new freedoms.