"File off the serial numbers, change the body lines a bit, give it a new paint job, switch it over the state line, and it’s yours!—that’s the secret of literary success. Editors always claim to be looking for new stories but they don’t buy them; they buy “mixture as before.” Because the cash customers want to be entertained, not amazed, not instructed, not frightened."

"A beautiful summer day in Iowa leaves no room for worry."

"“Uh, I find I’m astonished again. How is this place run? Is it an anarchy?” Hazel shrugged. Justin Foote looked thoughtful. “No, I wouldn’t say so. It is not that well organized.”"

"“Would you find that convincing?” “No.” Justin Foote nodded. “Reasonable. When a rational man hears something asserted that conflicts with all common sense he will not—and should not—believe it without compelling evidence."

"A wife’s unique right, fixed by tradition, to manipulate her own husband runs unbroken and invariant at least back to Eve and the Apple. I will not criticize a sacred tradition."

"“Dr. Harshaw says that ’the word “love” designates a subjective condition in which the welfare and happiness of another person are essential to one’s own happiness.’”"

"There ought to be some rule limiting the number of emotional shocks a person can legally be subjected to in one day."

"It would be silly of me to argue with something I don’t understand."

"How can you argue with a woman who won’t?"

"“The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it—once you can honestly say, ‘I don’t know,’ then it becomes possible to get at the truth.”"

"This sort of nonsense should be lumped with transubstantiation. If true, it can’t be proved."

"“This computer became self-aware and acquired free will.” “Interesting. If true. I don’t have to believe it. I don’t.”"

"“I’m a hard case. I don’t believe in table-tapping, astrology, virgin birth—” “Virgin birth isn’t difficult.” “I mean, in the theological sense; I’m not talking about genetics laboratories. —virgin birth, numerology, a literal hell, magic, witchcraft, campaign promises. You tell me something that runs contrary to horse sense; I’ll be at least as hard to sell as I was about your ancient years.”"

"“Buster always was the pragmatist. His solution to almost any problem was to cut somebody’s throat.” “Well, it’s a convincing argument,” I admitted."

"Shrinks are the blind leading the blind; even the best of them are dealing from a short deck. Anyone who consults a shrink should have his head examined."

"You’re not stupid, Richard, just spiritual."

"They were both of the extremely opposite sex and just being around them was fun."

"A monarch’s neck should always have a noose around it—it keeps him upright."

"For dying is not to be feared—it is the final comfort. As we all learn, eventually."

"Beloved, you startled me with the notion that bad manners could be judged a hanging offense. My only concern is for evil, rather than for bad manners. I think evil deeds should never go unpunished. God’s arrangements for punishing evil are too slow to suit me; I want it done now."

"“My uncle used to say, ‘Never pick up a stray kitten…unless you’ve already made up your mind to be owned by it.’”"

"Almost all crime depends on the acquiescence of the victim. If the victim refuses his assigned role, the criminal is placed at a disadvantage, one so severe that it usually takes an understanding and compassionate judge to set things right. I had broken the rules; I had fought back."

"I didn’t want him dead. Unless you are on a battlefield or in a hospital, a corpse is an embarrassment, hard to explain. The management was bound to be stuffy about it."

"But I did not explain to you the other insidious aspect of writing. There is no way to stop. Writers go on writing long after it becomes financially unnecessary...because it hurts less to write than it does not to write."

"There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized. Or even cured."

"I scrolled on down to the obituaries. I usually read the obituaries first as there is always the happy chance that one of them will make my day."

"Every closet has a skeleton. This is a natural law."

"This is why criminologists place more faith in circumstantial evidence than they do in the testimony of eyewitnesses. You are the ideal eyewitness, intelligent, sincere, cooperative, and honest. You have reported a mixture of what you did see, what you thought you saw, what you failed to notice although it was in front of you, and what your logical mind fills in as necessities linking what you saw and what you thought you saw. This mixture is now all solidly in your mind as a true memory, a firsthand, eyewitness memory. But it didn’t happen."

"A friend who offers help without asking for explanations is a treasure beyond price."

"Life is filled with tragedy; if you let it overwhelm you, you cannot enjoy life’s innocent pleasures."

"Time is never a problem on the God level. Or space. Whatever needed to deceive you was provided. But no more than that. That is the conservative principle in art at the God level. While I can't do it, not being at that level, I have seen a lot of it done. A skillful Artist in shapes and appearances does no more than necessary to create His effect."

"Wisdom includes not getting angry unnecessarily. The Law ignores trifles and the wise man does, too."

"People who are busy and happy don’t write diaries; they are too busy living."

"Don’t kid yourself, Friday; knowing too much is a capital offense. In politics it always has been."

"I had learned lately that wanting something and being able to pay for it were not the same."

"Las Vegas is a three-ring circus with a hangover."

"I suspect that there are just two sorts of lawyers: those who spend their efforts making life easy for other people—and parasites."

"I think that you are immune to the temptations of religion. If you are not, I cannot help you, any more than I could keep you from acquiring a drug habit. A religion is sometimes a source of happiness and I would not deprive anyone of happiness. But it is a comfort appropriate for the weak, not for the strong—and you are strong. The great trouble with religion—any religion—is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask in at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason—but one cannot have both."

"Self-pity, he said, is the most demoralizing of all vices."

"Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have named...but a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot."

"It seems to me that any law that is not enforced and can’t be enforced weakens all other laws."

"“So far as I have listened, before a revolution can take place, the population must lose faith in both the police and the courts.” “Elementary. Go on.” “Well…high taxation is important and so is inflation of the currency and the ratio of the productive to those on the public payroll. But that’s old hat; everybody knows that a country is on the skids when its income and outgo get out of balance and stay that way—even though there are always endless attempts to wish it away by legislation.”"

"It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn’t the whole population."

"Young Daniel Shipstone saw at once that the problem was not a shortage of energy but lay in the transporting of energy. Energy is everywhere—in sunlight, in wind, in mountain streams, in temperature gradients of all sorts wherever found, in coal, in fossil oil, in radioactive ores, in green growing things. Especially in ocean depths and in outer space energy is free for the taking in amounts lavish beyond all human comprehension. Those who spoke of “energy scarcity” and of “conserving energy” simply did not understand the situation. The sky was “raining soup”; what was needed was a bucket in which to carry it."

"Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules on sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers."

"All normal human beings have soi-disant mixed-up glands. The race is divided into two parts; those who know this and those who do not."

"“Religious” = “absolute belief without proof.”"

"“Georges, I don’t know much about California politics—” “My dear, no one knows much about California politics, including California politicians.”"

"You’re not a stranger; you’re an old friend we haven’t known very long."

"I had hit him in his male pride. Unless you intend to kill him immediately thereafter, never kick a man in the balls. Not even symbolically. Or perhaps especially not symbolically."