At conventions, one of the standard questions I get is, 'Are you writing any new novels?' To which I used to respond, in my smart-[alec] fashion, 'No, I've decided to write only old novels.'

When...has a mugging case ever heard a defense attorney claim, 'Your Honor, the victim was dressed in an Armani suit and wearing a Rolex. Clearly he was begging to be assaulted.'

Opposites can attract, as in magnetism. Or explode, as in matter and antimatter.

There are no such things as happy endings. Never. They're totally manufactured by fiction writers who choose to end the story on a high point.

We're all of us dying . . . from the moment we're born

If we can't alter the tide of events, at least we can be nearby with towels to mop up.

To the brave crew and passengers of the Kobayshi Maru…sucks to be you.

...They are merely scars, not mortal wounds and you must use them to propel you forward.

Maybe science is just magic with delusions of lack of grandeur.

As for jokes, I don't think it's necessarily that what I write is funny.

If by reaction you mean critical reaction, I was confident that we were putting out a quality book [ Treachery]. So I was reasonably sure that we'd get positive notices.

If an author was a god, then he was a very poor second-rate one, scrabbling around in the foothills of Olympus.

More business is lost every year through neglect than through any other cause.

As a writer, I've always been interested in others.

If love is blind I guess I'll buy myself a cane

To philosopher and historian the madness and imbecile wickedness of mankind ought to appear ordinary events.

All beings are not only the parents in the past. They will become the Buddha in the future. If you free their lives, you are Buddha.

And may we find when ended is the page, Death but a tavern on our pilgrimage.

Many a family tree needs trimming

For the children with their greedy little mouths represent the future, which like time itself will devour all now alive.

It is a mark of how far we have gone on the road to serfdom that government allocation and rationing of oil is the automatic response to the oil crisis.