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The women in my life have all been librarians, English teachers, or booksellers. If they couldn't speak pidgin Tolstoy, articulate Henry James, or give me directions to Usher and Ox, it was no go. I have always longed for education, and pillow talk's the best.
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You'd type like hell. I spent $9.80 and in nine days I had Fahrenheit 451.
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Ideas excite me, and as soon as I get excited, the adrenaline gets going and the next thing I know I'm borrowing energy from the ideas themselves.
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A single face turned upward toward all Time One flesh, one ecstasy, one peace.
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The gift of life is so precious that we should feel an obligation to pay back the universe for the gift of being alive.
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The television is 'real'. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest, 'What nonsense!'.
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How long has it been since you wrote a story where your real love or your real hatred somehow got onto the paper? When was the last time you dared release a cherished prejudice so it slammed the page like a lightning bolt?
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If you write a hundred short stories and they're all bad, that doesn't mean you've failed. You fail only if you stop writing.
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We're a free society; we've got television. We have radio. We have newspapers. We have the videocassette, which is coming into play. These are new freedoms.
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Science-fiction balances you on the cliff. Fantasy shoves you off.
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If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.
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I don't see myself as a philosopher. That's awfully boring.
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Every story I've written was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me; it is my life.
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You feed yourself. Make sure you have all the information, whether it's aesthetic, scientific, mathematical, I don't care what it is. Then you walk away from it and let it ferment. You ignore it and pretend you don't care. Next thing you know, the answer comes.
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We meet on the common ground of an uncommon age and share out our gifts of dark and light, good and bad, simple joy and not so simple sorrow.
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Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed.
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You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
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The only good writing is intuitive writing. It would be a big bore if you knew where it was going. It has to be exciting, instantaneous and it has to be a surprise. Then it all comes blurting out and it’s beautiful. I’ve had a sign by my typewriter for 25 years now which reads, ‘DON’T THINK!’
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I'm inclined to believe you need the psychiatrist.
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Kill two birds with one stone, feed the homeless to the hungry.
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There are two races of people -- men and women -- no matter what women's libbers would have you pretend. The male is motivated by toys and science because men are born with no purpose in the universe except to procreate. There is lots of time to kill beyond that. They've got to find work. Men have no inherent center to themselves beyond procreating. Women, however, are born with a center. They can create the universe, mother it, teach it, nurture it. Men read science fiction to build the future. Women don't need to read it. They are the future.
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You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year
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I'm not in control of my muse. My muse does all the work.
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When the wind is right, a faint odor of kerosene is exhaled from Senator McCarthy.