Sometimes, though, I feel that pushing books is a whole lot like pushing medicine. Think of books as pills. I have pills that cure ignorance and pills that cure boredom. I have pills to elevate moods and pills to open people's eyes to the awful truth: uppers and downers as they were. I sell pills to help people find themselves and pills to help them lose themselves when they require escape from the pressures and anxieties of life in a complex society.

Magic things are fond of deceptions.

The principal difference between an adventurer and a suicide is that the adventurer leaves himself a margin of escape (the narrower the margin the greater the adventure), a margin whose width and length may be determined by unknown factors but whose navigation is determined by the measure of the adventurer's nerve and wits. It is exhilarating to live by one's nerves or toward the summit of one's wits.

Nobody quite knew what to make of the moon any more.

As expected, you get his machine. Someday, even the "call of nature" will be answered by a machine.

The scientist keeps the romantic honest, and the romantic keeps the scientist human.

The trouble with the fast lane is that all the movement is horizontal. And I like to go vertical sometimes.