"When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim's body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep. In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods."

"There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell of The Street."

"It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive shortcut of supernaturalism."

"Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous. Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species — if separate species we be — for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world."

"I screamed aloud that I was not afraid; that I never could be afraid; and others screamed with me for solace. We swore to one another that the city was exactly the same, and still alive..."

"Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon."

"My opinion of my whole experience varies from time to time. In broad daylight, and at most seasons I am apt to think the greater part of it a mere dream; but sometimes in the autumn, about two in the morning when winds and animals howl dismally, there comes from inconceivable depths below a damnable suggestions of rhythmical throbbing ... and I feel that the transition of Juan Romero was a terrible one indeed."

"The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!"

"I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below."

"I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little-known books, and in roaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home. I do not think that what I read in these books or saw in these fields and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there; but of this I must say little, since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect which I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants around me. It is sufficient for me to relate events without analysing causes."

"In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence those isolated phenomena, seen and felt only by a psychologically sensitive few, which lie outside its common experience. Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them; but the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns as madness the flashes of super-sight which penetrate the common veil of obvious empiricism."

"Disintegration is quite painless, I assure you."

"What do we know ... of the world and the universe about us? Our means of receiving impressions are absurdly few, and our notions of surrounding objects infinitely narrow. We see things only as we are constructed to see them, and can gain no idea of their absolute nature. With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos, yet other beings with wider, stronger, or different range of senses might not only see very differently the things we see, but might see and study whole worlds of matter, energy, and life which lie close at hand yet can never be detected with the senses we have."

"I have a kind of psychic invisibility. As long as I can stay scared, I can keep people from seeing me. That's what we have to count on."

"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."

"Think of it as evolution in action."

"God was knocking, and he wanted in bad."

"Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn."

"Everything starts as somebody's daydream."

"The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!"

"The Unexpected always comes at the most awkward times."

"Part of being a coward is wanting security."

"Do you know what it’s like to be suddenly poor and not know how to live poor?"

"There is no turning away from knowledge."

"“Do you believe in hunches?” “No.” “Neither do I. Except just this once.”"

"The moral of this story is, anything you don’t understand is dangerous until you do understand it."

"“Does it help you to know that you’ve ruined my day?” “It does, yes.”"

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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.”"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Stupidity is always a capital crime."

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