I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.

If you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended, then if you were really, really good at algebra you could write the formula for all the future; and although nobody can be so clever as to do it, the formula must exist just as if one could.

Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one. A moment. In childhood. When it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever. It must have been shattering, stamped into one’s memory. And yet, I can’t remember it.

I can't remember what my first script was.

Death followed by eternity the worst of both worlds. It is a terrible thought.

The fact is that people are attracted to new work and by new work.

Sometimes people are so close to the material, they miss an important cross-reference. You can't drop this line because half an hour later, it affects that line. And the writer is the person who knows that immediately.