The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society’s values, can force it to change.

'You spin in the sky, the world spins under you, and you step from land to land, while we . . .' She turned her head right, left, and her black hair curled and uncurled on the shoulder of her coat. 'We have our dull, circled lives, bound in gravity, worshiping you!'

Discourse says, 'You are.' Rhetoric preserves the freedom to say, 'I am not.

It is easier to argue that something nobody believes in actually exists than it is to argue that something everybody believes in is unreal.

Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind - -vividly, forcefully.

The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society’s values, can force it to change.

From 1968 on, I was pretty much the black, gay SF writer.