"Many years ago, when I was merely a vegetarian, I met the great Cesar Chavez, and he said to me: "If you are interested in preventing animal suffering, the first thing you should give up is eggs and milk, because the animals who produce those foods lead the most unhappy lives. You would do better to eat meat and stop eating eggs and dairy products." I was shocked, since I had no intention of eating meat but had never thought of giving up eggs or dairy products. But when I looked into it I realized he was right, and now, years later, after I have studied the matter up close, I know for certain that he was completely correct about the cruel treatment of the animals raised for such products. The advantages of a vegan diet are enormous for our health, for the environment, for the animals themselves."

"Forty years ago, here in the United States, there were true activist visionaries and mass movements to enact those visions...There was a César Chávez and a viable farm workers' movement, propped up by the agit-prop of a teatro para un movimiento campesino."

"Our separate struggles are really one. A struggle for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity. ... You and your valiant fellow workers have demonstrated your commitment to righting grievous wrongs forced upon exploited people. We are together with you in spirit and determination that our dreams for a better tomorrow will be realized."

"[L]ate one night in 1962, there was a knock at the door and there were three men. One of them was Cesar Chavez. And the next thing I knew, they were sitting around our table talking about a union...Cesar said, "The women have to be involved. They're the ones working out in the fields with their husbands. If you can take the women out to the fields, you can certainly take them to meetings." So I sat up straight and said to myself, "That's what I want!""

"One of the heroic figures of our time."

"Chavez fought illegal immigration tenaciously. In 1969, he marched to the Mexican border to protest farmers' use of illegal aliens as strikebreakers. He was joined by Reverend Ralph Abernathy and Senator Walter Mondale. In the mid 1970s, he conducted the “Illegals Campaign” to identify and report illegal workers, “an effort he deemed second in importance only to the boycott” (of produce from non-unionized farms), according to Pawel. She quotes a memo from Chavez that said, “If we can get the illegals out of California, we will win the strike overnight.” The Illegals Campaign didn't just report illegals to the (unresponsive) federal authorities. Cesar sent his cousin, ex-con Manuel Chavez, down to the border to set up a “wet line” (as in “wetbacks”) to do the job the Border Patrol wasn't being allowed to do. Unlike the Minutemen of a few years ago, who arrived at the border with no more than lawn chairs and binoculars, the United Farm Workers patrols were willing to use direct methods when persuasion failed. Housed in a series of tents along the Arizona border, the crews in the wet line sometimes beat up illegals, the “cesarchavistas” employing violence even more widely on the Mexican side of the border to prevent crossings."

"Within the next year they are spending millions of dollars to destroy the United Farm Workers. They are spending millions of dollars to tell what a bad administrator César Chávez is. Have you seen these articles in the New York Times and Time magazine? They say César Chávez is a bad administrator. What they really mean is he is the wrong color. And if he were a good administrator.... Can you imagine five clinics, a medical plan, a credit union, a retirement center for farm workers, fantastic increases in wages, the removal of the labor contract system-all of this César did in a few short years. What would he do if he was a good administrator?"

"Priests learn to be practical, if their gods don’t."

"Human beings are fragile, watery things. Death spells are the easiest magic there is."

"Civilization must have become awfully stereotyped before its collapse."

"War between the sexes had always seemed silly to Corbell. Too much fraternizing with the enemy, ha-ha."

"Suddenly Corbell missed Mirabelle terribly. He mourned her, not because she was dead, but because she was gone."

"Too much imagination and I’ll scare myself to death. Too little and I’ll get myself killed."

"My self-centeredness is as human as your fanaticism."

"He’s a computer. Perfect memory, rigid logic, no judgment. I forgot. I talked to him like a human being, and now—"

"He felt good. At worst he had found a brand-new way to die."

"You’re insane. Imagine my amazement."

"“Can you take orders?” “I was in the army.” “What does that mean?” “Means yes.”"

"Doctor, you keep asking me to see your point of view, which is based on ethics. You never see mine, which isn’t."

"It had been a long dull evening, with only the thought of leaving the party early to look forward to."

"She waited for him to explain a universe in which there was so much injustice."

"As I said, it was inevitable, and I don’t let laws of nature upset me."

"I sometimes wonder why the aristocracy isn’t extinct, the lot of you seem so stupid sometimes."

"And that’s another reason I don’t want contact between your species and mine. You’re all Crazy Eddies. You think every problem has a solution."

"He liked everything about the university except the students."

"Any story that needs a critic to explain it, needs rewriting. A lucidly written, easily understood book is likely to escape critical attention."

"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."

"6) Everybody talks first draft."

"5) If you've nothing to say, say it any way you like. Stylistic innovations, contorted story lines or none, exotic or genderless pronouns, internal inconsistencies, the recipe for preparing your lover as a cannibal banquet: feel free. If what you have to say is important and/or difficult to follow, use the simplest language possible. If the reader doesn't get it then, let it not be your fault."

"4) It is a sin to waste the reader's time."

"3) Stories to end all stories on a given topic, don't."

"2) Never be embarrased or ashamed about anything you choose to write. (Think of this before you send it to a market)"

"1) Writers who write for other writers should write letters."

"19) Think before you make the coward's choice. Old age is not for sissies."

"17) No technique works if it isn't used."

"16) There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it. To prove a point, one may seek out a foolish Socialist, thirteenth century Liberal, Scientologist, High Frontier advocate, Mensa member, science fiction fan, Jim Bakker acolyte, Christian, witch, or fanatical devotee of Special Interest Lib. It doesn't really reflect on the cause itself. Ad hominem argument saves time, but it's still a fallacy."

"11) There is a time and place for tact. And there are times when tact is entirely misplaced."

"10) Anarchy is the least stable of social structures."

"9) Ethics change with technology."

"8) History never repeats itself."

"7) Any damn fool can predict the past."

"6) It is easier to destroy than create. Bin Laden tore down the World Trade Center? Let's see him build one. If human beings didn't have a strong preference for creation, nothing would get built, ever."

"5) Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless."

"4) Giving up freedom for security has begun to look naive. Even to me. Many of you were ahead of me on this — Three out of four hijacked airplanes destroyed the World Trade Center and a piece of the Pentagon in 2001. How is it possible that those planes were taken using only five perps armed with knives? It was possible because all those hundreds of passengers had been carefully stripped of every possible weapon. We may want to reconsider this approach. It doesn't work in high schools either."

"3) Mother Nature doesn't care if you're having fun."

"2) Never fire a laser at a mirror."

"1a) Never throw shit at an armed man. 1b) Never stand next to someone who is throwing shit at an armed man."

"Here is where the predictions failed: We didn't take Cargo Cult mentality into account: "if somebody has something I don't, he must have stolen it." We didn't understand how good we could get at communication — when you have something that someone else doesn't, the whole damn planet knows it."

"Cheap superconductors imply maglev trains everywhere. Computers could get big again, with RAM/ROM rising by powers of forty and fifty, if superconductors shed the heat. Laser handguns against superconducting armor. I'm not predicting; I just love playing with superconductors."

"We've fallen way behind. Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen."