Science fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story.

What's needed in this case is conscious and serious practice in hearing, and using, and being used by, other people's voices.

Go to bed; tired is stupid.

A man does not make his destiny: he accepts it or denies it.

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.

Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.

Any artist must expect to work amid the total, rational indifference of everybody else to their work, for years, perhaps for life.