He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun.

It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.

Nothing is yours. It is to use. It is to share. If you will not share it, you cannot use it.

Sometimes I not only stand there and take it, I even smile at them and say I'm sorry. When I feel that smile coming onto my face, I wish I could take my face off and stamp on it.

Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.... Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.... Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies.

I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer.

All makers must leave room for the acts of the spirit. But they have to work hard and carefully, and wait patiently, to deserve them.