Men throw huge shadows on the lawn, don't they? Then, all their lives, they try to run to fit the shadows. But the shadows are always longer.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

If you learn only methods, you'll be tied to your methods, but if you learn principles you can devise your own methods.

We should have stayed on the moon. We should have made moon the base, instead of building space stations, which are fragile and which fly apart.

Last night I thought about all the kerosene I've used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I'd never even thought that thought before...It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life, and then I come along in two minutes and boom! it's all over.

Fantasies are things that can't happen, and science fiction is about things that can happen.

Most of us can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for... are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book.