Robert Silverberg Quotes

Three Rules for Literary Success: 1. Read a lot. 2. Write a lot. 3. Read a lot more, write a lot more.

Utopias are boring. Distopias on the other hand, are interesting.

Thus does the unyielding, inescapable future ineluctably devour the present.

Never pass by a chance to shut up.

When you know that something is dying inside you, you learn not to put much trust in the random vitalities of the fleeting moment.

Ignorance can't be pardoned. Only cured.

Men of great spirit are at high risk at a time when small souls rule the world.

We are born by accident into a purely random universe.

Unacceptable, maybe. But not unthinkable. Nothing's unthinkable once somebody's thought it.

Living, we fret. Dying, we live. I’ll keep that in mind. I’ll be of good cheer.

The denizens of Citizens Service Houses are not, as a rule, gifted with a lot of common sense, but they often make up for that by being extremely argumentative and vindictive.

I hate no one, sir. It seems a waste of emotional energy.

One defining symptom of decadence is a fondness for vast and nonsensical extravagance.

My temperament is not inclined toward more self-promotion than is absolutely necessary for my professional well-being.

Stale is stale and borrowed is borrowed, no matter how original your models may have been.

Who could not return from a visit to Jack Vance's world, without feeling that he had been somewhere unique, that he had experienced things unavailable in our mundane world?

I find the world and all it contains extremely fascinating. Is this sinful?

Aristocrats might shrug, but commoners, dreading any collapse of the social order, wanted the rules of behavior to be observed.

Having lost our present and our future, we had of necessity to bend all our endeavors to the past, which no one could take from us if only we were vigilant enough.

To enter the past is like poking a baseball bat into a spiderweb: it can't be done subtly or delicately.

I'm an urban New Yorker to the last molecule.

[He] had riposted with the proper metaphysical statements, yet he was disturbed.

I tried to be good to Judith, I tried to be kind and loving, but our hatred kept coming between us.

The main thing about aliens is that they are alien. They feel no responsibility for fulfilling any of your expectations. (Dark City Lights)