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.

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?

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

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.

Failure is an arrow pointing the right direction.

It's okay to be afraid, it means you have something to live for.

The best decisions are always made quickly and changed slowly, not made slowly and changed quickly.

Man's survival, from the time of Adam and Eve until the invention of agriculture, must have been precarious because of his inability to ensure his food supply.

I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say 'figment.'

Ignorance has always been the weapon of tyrants; enlightenment the salvation of the free.

I don't want to sound like a self-help book, but it really has been transformative for me to take a look at my relationships in a new way and see my part in them. Everybody's going through that.

A lot of beautiful people are stupid. There are a tremendous number of idiots who look so good. It's frightening.

I'm living life right now, maine and this what Imma do til it's over, til it's over.. but it's far from over.

I want to take retirement rather than feel as if it's taking me unawares. Maybe even seize it joyously. But at least behold it without looking back so longingly that I turn into a pillar of regret.