"Many critics avoid science fiction and fantasy as demons avoid holy water. And why not? A science fiction work that needs explaining may or may not be trash, but the standard-issue critic is not likely to know the difference, and not likely to be able to explain it either."

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

"I’ll try anything that improves my education and is fun at the time."

"Do you know the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel? If you try to read a graphic novel in the sauna, it comes apart. Glue melts; staples don’t."

"WHY WARS DON’T STOP Then who can end a war? The leaders of embattled nations? They aren’t bleeding, except by proxy. It’s only their own imaginations that make war different from a complex chess game. The citizens at home? They are usually assured that they are winning, or that the enemy are inhuman monsters, or that to lose would be annihilation, or all of the above. Aside from all this, surrender is dishonorable. This is only partly an ethical judgment. It feels dishonorable. Nobody fakes a surrender reflex without cost. Surrender is losing a fight, and we aren’t wired to take that lightly. All of evolution is against losing casually, for trout as well as men. Wars continue because there is nobody who can end them. WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT You can’t do anything about it."

"It doesn’t take brains to mate!"

"Infantry, which means killing on foot and doesn’t have anything to do with children."

"A sapient species doesn’t reach space unless the members learn to cooperate. They’ll wreck the environment, one way or another, war or straight libertarianism or overbreeding."

"Heinlein spun off ideas at a terrific rate. Other writers picked them up…along with a distrust for arrogance combined with stupidity or ignorance, particularly in politicians."

"Government over large areas needs emotional ties. It also needs stability. Government by 50%-plus-one hasn’t enjoyed particularly stable politics—and it lasts only so long as the 50%-minus-one minority is willing to submit. Is heredity a rational way to choose leaders? It has this in its favor: the leader is known from an early age to be destined to rule, and can be educated to the job. Is that preferable to education based on how to get the job? Are elected officials better at governing, or at winning elections?"

"There aren’t many prizes for second place in battle."

"Collaborations are unnatural. The writer is a jealous god. He builds his universe without interference. He resents the carping of mentally deficient critics, and the editor’s capricious demands for revisions. Let two writers try to make one universe, and their defenses get in the way."

"You don’t stop planning just because there’s no hope."

"“But there’s an old legend,” I said. “Once every hundred years the Los Angeles smog rolls away for a single night, leaving the air as clear as interstellar space. That way the gods can see if Los Angeles is still there. If it is, they roll the smog back so they won’t have to look at it.”"

"Casual murder, casual suicide, casual crime. Why not? If alternate universes are a reality, then cause and effect are an illusion. The law of averages is a fraud. You can do anything, and one of you will, or did."

"In fantasy, more than in other forms of literature, the obligation is to teach something universally true about the human condition."

"It takes a lot of people to hold civilization together; some of us are only here to ask the right questions."

"Nuclear is the safest power source we’ve got—with two exceptions, neither of which is being built. If some folk are terrified of unseen death by radiation, then let ’em deal with their own neuroses, instead of forcing us to stop building the atomic plants."

"I knew it long ago: I’m a compulsive teacher, but I can’t teach. The godawful state of today’s education system isn’t what’s stopping me. I lack at least two of the essential qualifications. I cannot “suffer fools gladly.” The smartest of my pupils would get all my attention, and the rest would have to fend for themselves. And I can’t handle being interrupted. Writing is the answer. Whatever I have to teach, my students will select themselves by buying the book. And nobody interrupts a printed page."

"Writing is, therefore, both a form of compulsive behavior and, I frequently tell people, a self-induced form of mental illness. Those few writers who don’t start off by being a little nuts soon get that way as a direct result of their vocation."

"Time is a one-way street with no parking spaces. You just have to keep going."

"Ten thousand years wasn't enough...no lifetime was enough, unless you lived it in such a way as to make it enough."

"A sufficiently intelligent being will look about her, solve all questions, then cease activity."

"I’d thought my way into this mess. I should be able to think my way out, shouldn’t I?"

"Gambling was safer than war. More fun, too. Best of all, it gave him better odds."

"“Do you play games of chance?” “Emphatically yes. The process of living is a game of chance. To avoid chance is insanity.”"

"In a universe the size of ours almost anything that can happen, will."

"“That’s impossible. Isn’t it? Carlos?” Carlos’ mouth twisted. “Not if it’s being done.”"

"Peace isn’t a stable condition, not for us. Maybe not for anything that lives."

"Anyone who says human nature can’t be changed is out of his head. To make it stick, he’s got to define human nature—and he can’t."

"I asked him, “Do you know the difference between nude and naked?” He shook his head. “Nude is artistic. Naked is defenseless.”"

"There was this about him: he knew who I was, but he hadn’t remembered my name. Ron Cole had better things to think about than what name belonged with whom. A name was only a tag and a conversational gambit."

"The morning was blacker than the inside of a smoker’s lungs."

"Stupidity is always a capital crime."

"When you trade among the stars, there is no repeat business."

"A species that can’t develop spaceflight is no better than animals."

"I had to grin. Morris was shocked and horrified. I’d shown him a brand new sin."

"Presently she gave her considered opinion. “Idiots.” “No. They’re just like all of us: They want something for nothing.”"

"The trouble with sharing too many beds was that one’s chance of running into a really bad situation was improved almost to certainty."

"“Do you like strange places and faraway people—or vice versa?” “Both.”"

"Talking to the Council would be like shouting obscenities at a forest fire."

"Drugs: “There’s no way to keep them from getting in. Anyone who wants drugs can get them. We make arrests where we can, and so what? Me, I’m betting on Darwin.” “How do you mean?” “The next generation won’t use drugs because they’ll be descended from people who had better sense.”"

"For each human being there is an optimum ratio between change and stasis. Too little change, he grows bored. Too little stability, he panics and loses his ability to adapt."

"There’s always another problem behind the one you just solved. Does that mean that you should stop solving problems?"

"Once the ocean teamed with life, Svetz thought. Now the continental shelf is as dead as the moon: nothing but bubble cities. Once this whole continent was all forest and living desert and fresh water. We cut down the trees and shot the animals and poisoned to the rivers and irrigated the deserts so that even the desert life died; and now there’s nothing left but the food yeast and us. We’ve forgotten so much about the past that we can’t separate legend from fact. We’ve wiped out most of the forms of life on earth in the last fifteen hundred years, and changed the composition of the air to the extent that we’d be afraid to change it back. I fear the unknown beasts of the past. I cannot breathe the air. I do not know the edible plants. I could not kill the animals for food. I do not know which would kill me. The earth’s past is as alien to me as another planet."

"But the horse ran on, daring Svetz with its eyes. How to describe such motion? Svetz had never seen ballet. He knew how machinery moved, and this wasn’t it. All he could think of was a man and a woman making love. Slippery-smooth rhythmic motion, absolute single-minded purpose, motion for the pleasure of motion. It was terrible in its beauty, the flight of the horse."

"Any time seems long when you need to make a decision but can’t."

"Was he deadpan because he didn’t care anymore? How much boredom can you meet in three hundred years?"

"Just take my word for it, will you? Assume I’m a genius."

"I didn’t want to find her. Not now. Our bargain had been clear, and also inevitable; and there are advantages to sleeping alone. I’ll think of them in a moment."