Gaia spins on, silently contemplating what it means to be born into a sarcastic universe.

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.

Don't live off your past successes or failures, live for the next big pursuit.

My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.

My African roots made me what I am today. They’re the reason I’m from the Dominican Republic. They’re the reason I exist at all. To these roots I owe everything.

I should have told her at the time. I could have taken a deep breath, looked away, and forced myself to say it.

Idealism is like a castle in the air if it is not based on a solid foundation of social and political realism.

Los Angeles is a large city-like area surrounding the Beverly Hills Hotel.

If you suppress the exorbitant love of pleasure and money, idle curiosity, iniquitous pursuits and wanton mirth, what a stillness would there be in the greatest cities.

Race is a universal flaw in humanity. So yes, I've been in many situations where I've felt like the outsider because of the color of my skin.

You can't build a chimney from the top, you know.

A drunkard is a dead man And all dead men are drunk.