All Quotes

"You should read in your own field only when you're young. When I was 8, 10, 12, 16, 25, I read science fiction. But then I went on to Alexander Pope and John Donne and Moliere to mix it up."

"I didn’t write Fahrenheit 451 about us. I wrote it about Stalin and Mussolini and Hitler. … I may not even talk about book banning if I don’t feel like it. I don’t prepare anything ahead. I have a dozen subjects to talk about because I write plays and poetry and essays, short stories and novels and screenplays and teleplays and operas. I’ll get lost, and the audience will have a wonderful time. And I’ll get a standing ovation, and they’ll go home."

"I’m working on a screenplay of Fahrenheit 451 that will star Mel Gibson. It will be better than the original because they left a lot of things out of the first film. … It works even better because we have political correctness now. Political correctness is the real enemy these days. The black groups want to control our thinking and you can’t say certain things. The homosexual groups don’t want you to criticize them. It’s thought control and freedom of speech control."

"I’m a magician who writes about ideas. I’m not a science-fiction writer. People who call me that are wrong. Most of what I write is fantasy or magic realism or plays about my Mexican-American background."

"Q: What would you put on your suggested reading list? RB: All the plays of George Bernard Shaw. I go back to Shakespeare constantly. I go back to the great poets. And there are a lot of women in my life. Edith Wharton has been part of my life for at least 45 years, and she’s been discovered in the last few years because of The Age of Innocence. Willa Cather, Eudora Welty, these are all very important women writers. And then you pick up the short stories of Steinbeck and Hemingway. F. Scott Fitzgerald is certainly our greatest American writer in the last 60 years."

"In science fiction, we dream. In order to colonize in space, to rebuild our cities, which are so far out of whack, to tackle any number of problems, we must imagine the future, including the new technologies that are required."

"The way to teach in this world is to pretend you're not teaching. Science fiction offers the chance to pretend to look the other way while teaching. Science fiction is also a great way to pretend you are writing about the future when in reality you are attacking the recent past and the present. You can criticize communists, racists, fascists or any other clear and present danger, and they can't imagine you are writing about them."

"We all love toys. I'm toy oriented. I write about toys. I've got a lot of toys. Hundreds of things. But computers are toys, and men like to mess around with smart dumb things. They feel creative. … People are talking about the Internet as a creative tool for writers. I say, "B.S. Stay away from that. Stop talking to people around the world and get your work done.""

"Don't tell me how to write my novel. Don't tell me you've got a better ending for it. I have no time for that."

"We should be back on the moon right now. And we should be going off to Mars immediately. … How come we're looking at our shoes instead of at the great nebula in Orion? Where did we mislay the moon and back off from Mars? The problem is, of course, our politicians, men who have no romance in their hearts or dreams in their heads."

"If NASA's budgeters could be convinced that there are riches on Mars, we would explode overnight to stand on the rim of the Martian abyss. We need space for reasons we have not as yet discovered, and I don't mean Tupperware. … NASA feels it has to justify everything it does in practical terms. And Tupperware was one of the many practical products that came out of space travel. NASA feels it has got to flimflam you to get you to spend money on space. That's B.S. We don't need that. Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that's life-enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live forever."

"We could have built a colony on the moon and moved on to Mars. We need something larger than ourselves — that's a real religious activity. That's what space travel can be — relating ourselves to the universe. … NASA is to blame — the entire government is to blame — and the end of the Cold War really pulled the plug, draining any passion that remained."

"I had decided to be a magician well before I decided to be a writer. I was the little boy who would get up on-stage and do magic wearing a fake mustache, which would fall off during the performance. I'm still trying to perform those tricks. Now I do it with writing."

"When I started writing seriously, I made the major discovery of my life — that I am right and everybody else is wrong if they disagree with me. What a great thing to learn: Don't listen to anyone else, and always go your own way."

"[before a gunfight, to the undertaker.] Get three coffins ready."

"You see, I understand you men were just playin' around, but the mule, he just doesn't get it. Course, if you were to all apologize... [the men laugh] I don't think it's nice, you laughin'. You see, my mule don't like people laughin'. Gets the crazy idea you're laughin' at him. Now if you apologize like I know you're going to, I might convince him that you really didn't mean it..."

"[after the same gunfight, to the undertaker] My mistake: four coffins."

"Sometimes the dead can be more useful than the living."

"When a man's got money in his pocket, he begins to appreciate peace."

"You shoot to kill, you better hit the heart. Your own words, Ramon. [Ramon, unaware Joe's wearing armor plating beneath his poncho, fires off two shots, but Joe stands right back up] The heart, Ramon. Don't forget the heart. Aim for the heart, or you'll never stop me."

"[to Ramon] "When the man with a 45 meets the man with a rifle, you said, "the man with a pistol is a dead man." [unloads his gun] Let's see if it's true. Go ahead, load up and shoot."

"Ramon Rojo: When a man with a .45 meets a man with a rifle, the man with a pistol will be a dead man. That's an old Mexican Proverb...and it's true."

"Don Miguel Rojo: With a gun in his hand, nothing stands in his way."

"Silvanito: I'm alive, and I want to remain with the living, understand? And when I'm dead, I want to remain with the dead. And I would be unhappy if somebody living forces me to remain with the living."

"Chico: Our orders are to make sure he does not die...but also to make sure he regrets the day he was born."

"This is the man with no name. Danger fits him like a glove."

"This short cigar belongs to a man with no name. This long gun belongs to a man with no name. This poncho belongs to a man with no name. He's going to trigger a whole new style in adventure."

"In his own way he is perhaps, the most dangerous man who ever lived!"

"Gian Maria Volonté - Ramón Rojo"

"Marianne Koch - Marisol"

"José Calvo - Silvanito, The Inn Keeper"

"Joseph Egger - Piripero, The Coffin Builder"

"Antonio Prieto - Don Miguel Benito Rojo"

"Sieghardt Rupp - Esteban Rojo"

"Wolfgang Lukschy - Sheriff John Baxter"

"Margarita Lozano - Doña Consuelo Baxter"

"Mario Brega - Chico, Rojo Gang Member"

"Benito Stefanelli - Rubio, Ramón's Rifleman"

"Aldo Sambrell - Manolo, Rojo Gang Member"

"Fernando Sánchez Polack - Vincente, Rojo Gang Member"

"Joyce Gordon as Marisol and Doña Consuelo Baxter"

"Jack Curtis as Silvanito, The Inn Keeper"

"Robert Dryden as Piripero, The Coffin Builder"

"George Gonneau as Don Miguel Benito Rojo"

"I just can’t imagine being in a world and not being fascinated with what ideas are doing to us."

"I hate Communism because it is the negation of liberty and because humanity is for me unthinkable without liberty. I am not a Communist, because Communism concentrates and swallows up in itself for the benefit of the State all the forces of society, because it inevitably leads to the concentration of property in the hands of the State, whereas I want the abolition of the State, the final eradication of the principle of authority and the patronage proper to the State, which under the pretext of moralizing and civilizing men has hitherto only enslaved, persecuted, exploited and corrupted them. I want to see society and collective or social property organized from below upwards, by way of free association, not from above downwards, by means of any kind of authority whatsoever."

"All exercise of authority perverts, and submission to authority humiliates."

"Every state, like every theology, assumes man to be fundamentally bad and wicked."

"Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not exist and develop without the cumulative social efforts of countless generations. Thus the individual, his freedom and reason, are the products of society, and not vice versa: society is not the product of individuals comprising it; and the higher, the more fully the individual is developed, the greater his freedom — and the more he is the product of society, the more does he receive from society and the greater his debt to it."

"Freedom is the absolute right of every human being to seek no other sanction for his actions but his own conscience, to determine these actions solely by his own will, and consequently to owe his first responsibility to himself alone."