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.

Linguistics is very much a science. It's a human science, one of the human sciences. And it's one of the more interesting human sciences.

In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations. As with gossip, you can't be too surprised if important things turn up that were left out of the first-heard version entirely; or if points initially made much of turn out to have been distorted, or simply not to have happened at all.

Clouds out of control decoct anticipation. What use can any of us have for two moons? The miracle of order has run out and I am left in an unmiraculous city where anything may happen.

I took my writing seriously, and it seemed to pay off.

A sentence has meaning in the sense that a train has a track, not that a train has a passenger.