The story of my very first sale is the fact that I dreamed up a foolproof paper to cheat an insurance company out of several hundred thousand dollars.

Inner space is so much more interesting, because outer space is so empty.

I've always written very tightly, and there's a good reason for that. There's no point in using words that you're not going to apply.

I find to my mixed astonishment that I do dream, but I didn't know it.

Ninety percent of SF [science fiction] is crud, but then, ninety percent of everything is crud.

Here's the point to be made - there are no synonyms. There are no two words that mean exactly the same thing.

Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever. You can go not only into the future, but into that wonderful place called other, which is simply another universe, another planet, another species.