You no longer have much in the way of knowing what to do in a big, epic novel about the future, because nobody knows what the hell is going to happen.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Bureaucracies are progressive. meaning they have a burning fear that someone. somewhere, is doing something without permission.

A Dark Age is not just a period in which people no longer know how to do things. The real key is that people no longer remember that certain things can be done at all.

One of the things we must be able to agree to is to lose an election and not take to the streets.

Of course most people underestimate the warrior characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples anyway. It takes a heap of piety to keep a Viking from wanting to go sack a city.

And that's another piece of advice I'll give junior writers; when you get to the point where they take you to lunch, let the editor suggest where to go.

That which does not kill me, has made a grave tactical error.

We have for years been building a society in which everybody plunders everybody, and while we are weary of being plundered, we enjoy the plunder.

I have a big collection of quotation programs...In particular, I like MCR Software's Wisdom of the Ages, which has the best selection of relevant quotes I know.

The Aztecs believe they started up in what's now New Mexico, and wandered for 10,000 years before they got down into where they are now, in Mexico City. That's a weird legend.

When modern values and modern people are under attack in a country, we can be sure of a dark future in that country!

We live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us in every conceivable way that to die is a terrible thing. And that is a tremendous disease from which our culture in particular suffers.

If a man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God?

Put yourself in the hands of the universe-then you will have no need for control.

Love means giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't want it.

I have found that fate is as liquid and elusive a word as love. Plato thought they were the same ... Novalis wrote that fate and soul are two names for the same principle.

We have a lifetime of wearing makeup, so while it's fun for girls to play, I think it's better that we wait until we're older to wear makeup!

You can always say, 'I wish I had landed that triple flip better, or I wish I didn't fall.' They're not regrets, just mistakes.

We have seen better days.