For someone to be taken seriously it was valuable to have the appearance of someone who deserved to be taken seriously.

The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction.

A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.

You can't really predict the future. All you can do is invent it.

My old English buddy, John Rackham, wrote and told me what made science fiction different from all other kinds of literature - science fiction is written according to the science fiction method.

My first thought was always a cigarette. It still is, but I haven't cheated.

It's clear that science and science fiction have overlapping populations.

What were we doing here? Traveling hundreds or thousands of light-years, to break our hearts?

That's what life is, just one learning experience after another, and when you're through with all the learning experiences you graduate and what you get for a diploma is, you die.

I did that for 40 years or more. I never had any writer's block. I got up in the morning, sat down at the typewriter - now, computer - lit up a cigarette.

I'm doing a book, 'Chasing Science,' about the pleasures of science as a spectator sport.

What is that thing? It looks like a model of the human digestive tract made from broken beer bottles and sadness.

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

The breath must be enticed or cajoled, like catching a horse in a field, not by chasing after it, but by standing still with an apple in one’s hand.

There was a while when I was feeling like, 'Damn, if I'd just been born black, I would not have to go through all this'.

Art without heart is craft.

The difference between resemblance nominalism and class nominalism is that the former, but not the latter, brings in resemblance to account for the truthmakers of the propositions in question.

David Duchovny is a dream; a dreamboat and a dream. He was so kind... He held my hand after we were done shooting and told me I did great. He's so good at what he does.

As the 109th Congress continues to debate legislation that will affect the lives of immigrants, it is important for us to remember that we are a nation of immigrants.

Always! That is the dreadful word ... it is a meaningless word, too.

I'm really just a normal person.