I was hardly fit for human society. Thus destiny shaped me to be a science fiction writer.

Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.

It is at night... that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull.

There are two kinds of writer: those that make you think, and those that make you wonder.

When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them, they show us the state of our decay.

Relax, enjoy yourself. Have another drink. It's patriotic to overconsume.

Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.

That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay.

Feedback is a pleasant thing. I get a lot of letters from unexpected people in unexpected places.

Why had I become a writer in the first place? Because I wasn't fit for society; I didn't fit into the system.

When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults.

Music is the language of the heart

Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.

Men in general desire the good and not merely what their fathers had.

The potential financial reward for building the 'next Windows' is so great that there will never be a shortage of new technologies seeking to challenge it.

Slaves who are underfed, diseased, resentful, despairing, and filled with hate will never yield that maximum of output which they might achieve under normal conditions.

Sometimes, at a certain point, the painting seems to have painted itself without my help - what I have called the 'eureka' moment when a sudden daring intervention has worked a miracle.

Never flinch. Make up your own mind and do it.

Men are vile inconstant toads.

Philosophy, for me, is a way of relearning to look at the world, a world that is familiar to us, that we know, that is shared by all human beings and also by nonhuman beings.

Capri on the Amalfi Coast in Italy is my ultimate holiday destination.