I found that it was all right to have Martians saying things Democrats and Republicans could never say.

I suppose we think euphemistically that all writers write because they have something to say that is truthful and honest and pointed and important. And I suppose I subscribe to that, too. But God knows when I look back over thirty years of professional writing, I'm hard-pressed to come up with anything that's important. Some things are literate, some things are interesting, some things are classy, but very damn little is important.

The good agent probably is not the reader, he's just the guy who can put together a deal.

Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man, that state is obsolete.

Why do I write? I guess that's been asked of every writer. I don't know. It isn't any massive compulsion.

I think Willa Cather did a short story called "Paul's Case," and in it, when he finally commits suicide, it says, "He surrendered to the black design of things." And that's what I anticipate death will be: a totally unconscious void in which you float through eternity with no particular consciousness of anything. I think once around is enough. I don't want to start it all over again.

If in any quest for magic, in any search for sorcery, witchery, legerdemain, first check the human spirit.