The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants. The volatile essences which make literature cannot survive the clichés of a long series of story conferences.

A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.

Television is really what we've been looking for all our lives.... [It's] perfect. You turn a few knobs and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primordial ooze.

There are two kinds of truth; The truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The fist of these is science and the second is art.

He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money.

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.

The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.