Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn't exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.

I wake up in the morning and I lie in bed, and it's the time I call "the theater of morning." All these thoughts run around in my head, between my ears when I'm waking up. It's not a dream state, but it's not completely awake either. So all these metaphors run around and then I pick one and I get out of bed and I do it. I'm very lucky.

It was a great place to write a novel about book burning, in the library basement.

Most members of Congress are politicians. They're bores. They're damn boring. They have no imagination, and they don't know how to imagine the future.

When the wind is right, a faint odor of kerosene is exhaled from Senator McCarthy.

You fail only if you stop writing.

Poverty made a sound like a wet cough in the shadows of the room.