I will raise up prophets to make conflicting pronouncements that inevitably will be garbled in transcription, resulting in mutually exclusive definitions of orthodoxy from which the open-minded will flee in dismay.

Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.

It may be important to write a book that doesn't come up to what I would like to have rather than to write no book at all.

There are writers who say they have no social responsibility except to write a good book, but that doesn't satisfy me.

The practice of diplomacy, I have found, is sometimes like eating soup with a fork: much activity yielding little nourishment.

To me, fantasy has always been the genre of escape, science fiction the genre of ideas. So if you can escape and have a little idea as well, maybe you have some kind of a cross-breed between the two.

We'll tell him his mother waits for him in heaven, I suppose." "Is that a lie?" "It's what we tell fools and children." She sighed. "Postulating a heaven gives man an out for having been unable to retain the paradise he was given here on earth.