Cultural contamination that is directed outward is always seen as ‘enlightenment.'

You don't have conversations with microprocessors. You tell them what to do, then helplessly watch the disaster when they take you literally!

When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.

The village is coming back, like it or not.

In all of history, we have found just one cure for error—a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.

Why must conversions always come so late? Why do people always apologize to corpses?

If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.

The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.

My first duty to write a gripping yarn. Second is to convey credible characters who make you feel what they feel. Only third comes the idea.

But honestly, if you do a rigorous survey of my work, I'll bet you'll find that biology is a theme far more often than physical science.

It is better to find your courage to make changes when you can choose to rather than being forced to. If you do not make change, change will make you.

Purists don't take shortcuts. For me, the vision is more important than anything.

I had been told I was on the road to hell, but I had no idea it was just a mile down the road with a dome on it.

The best-case scenario is that the glass shatters in my face! How do you think that makes me feel?

I prefer a kind of sweet, deep, rich prayer in which a person goes in and says, Take me down deep into the reason you gave me life. Take me down deep. It silences the chaos in me.

If you want to do something extraordinary, there's always risk involved. I was always willing to take that risk.

Ask Osama bin Laden is he is better off now than he was four years ago.

No man can afford to express, through words or acts, that which is not in harmony with his own beliefs, and if he does so, he must pay by the loss of his ability to influence others.

... Baggott enjoys living on the knife edge between hilarity and heartbreak and that makes her a writer after my own heart.

Shakespeare is forever coming into our affairs -- putting in his oar, so to speak -- with some pat word or sentence.