I used to not back down from a challenge.

I love biomedical science, I love astronomy, and you can't really do much with those in a fantasy setting.

There are relatively few science fiction or fantasy books with the main character being an old person.

Normal' is a dryer setting.

I regarded drugs as somewhat like rattlesnakes - it's possible to pick one up without getting bit, but why bother?

There is simple ignorance, not knowing, and willful ignorance that refuses to know, that covers the light of knowledge with the dark blanket of bias.

It may be far in the future, but there's some kind of logical way to get from where we are to where the science fiction is.

So when I got out of the military, I went back to school in biology, and earned a biology degree at the University of Texas, and then did some graduate work in it.

My first degree came years before my second. I had wanted to be a physicist, but I flunked calculus.

Hard to be a physics major at Rice University if you have flunked calculus.

I've taught Sunday school, I've sung in the choir, I directed a choir.

Listening is more important than solutioning.

If you don't think too good, don't think too much.

Don’t judge me for escaping the stresses and cruelty of the world differently than you do.

The great marriages are partnerships. It can't be a great marriage without being a partnership.

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.

Some of these guys... I've worked with Ice Cube, I think he's an immensely talented rapper and actor.

Oh, both my shoes are shiny new, And pristine is my hat My dress is 1922… My life is all like that.

Poetry, that is to say the poetic, is a primal necessity.

Dwelling on him would make him a bigger part of my life than I want him to be.

I look upon it as a Point of Morality, to be obliged by those who endeavour to oblige me