Writing is like sex. You have to save your love for the love object. If you go around spouting about your idea, there'll be no "charge" left. You can't father children that way.

You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people's faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.

Forgive, I hope you won't be upset, but when I was a boy I used to look up and see you behind your desk, so near but far away, and, how can I say this, I used to think that you were Mrs. God, and that the library was a whole world, and that no matter what part of the world or what people or thing I wanted to see and read, you'd find and give it to me.

Today we haved touched Mars. There is life on Mars, and it us us-extensions of our eyes in all directions, extensions of our mind, extensions of our heart and soul have touched Mars today. That's the message to look for there: We are on Mars. We are the Martians!

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.

The novel's not organized like a screenplay. If you shot the novel, you'd have a twelve-hour movie.

Sometimes I think I understand everything. Then I regain consciousness