Poets are regarded as handicapped writers whose work must be treated with a tender condescension, such as one accords the athletic achievements of basketball players confined to wheelchairs.

The gods, after all, are only human, and once their rage has been placated they are perfectly capable of acts of mercy and grace.

Genius is an infinite capacity for pain.

A predilection for genre fiction is symptomatic of a kind of arrested development.

Knowledge is devalued when it becomes too generally known

Let me tell you about the end of the world. It happened fifty years ago. Maybe a hundred. And since then it's been lovely. I mean it. Nobody tries to bother you. You can relax. You know what? I like the end of the world.

America is a nation of liars, and for that reason science fiction has a special claim to be our national literature, as the art form best adapted to telling the lies we like to hear and to pretend we believe.