What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one musn't make a virtue of it, or a profession...Insofar as I love life, I love [my country], but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope.

Age and illness made one a dualist

If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.

I think hard times are coming. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries, the realists of a larger reality.

I don’t think ‘science fiction’ is a very good name for it, but it’s the name that we’ve got. It is different from other kinds of writing, I suppose, so it deserves a name of its own. But where I can get prickly and combative is, if I’m just called a sci-fi writer. I’m not. I’m a novelist and poet. Don’t shove me into your damn pigeonhole, where I don’t fit, because I’m all over. My tentacles are coming out of the pigeonhole in all directions.

Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to unbuild walls.

The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.