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

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.

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.

The only people who have the long view are some scientists and some science fiction writers.

I have always lived in a world in which I'm just a spot in history. My life is not the important point. I'm just part of the continuum, and that continuum, to me, is a marvelous thing. The history of life, and the history of the planet, should go on and on and on and on. I cannot conceive of anything in the universe that has more meaning than that.

Other people's risks are statistical. When it's your risk, your own child, it isn't statistical anymore.

I tell you, lad, that men will believe is one says, "The Gods say..." They will believe if one says, "I had a Vision..." They will believe if one says, "It was told me on a tablet of hidden gold..." But, if one says, "History teaches," then they will not believe.