But it was pointless, it was stupid; he thought about thoughtless things. If I were a seabird . . . but how could you be a seabird? If you were a sea….

In theory, I work an eight-hour day and a five-day week which means I can socialise with my pals who mostly have normal jobs like teaching and comput….

I'm saying with very few exceptions nothing lasts forever, and among those exceptions, no work or thought of man is numbered..

That was how divorced from the human scale modern warfare had become. You could smash and destroy from unthinkable distances, obliterate planets from….

All our lives are symbols. Everything we do is part of a pattern we have at least some say in. The strong make their own patterns and influence other….

Science fiction is trying to find alternative ways of looking at realities..

There has seldom if ever a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, a….

Something in your voice tells me we approach the question of remuneration..

"I think I know the real reason." "Which is?" "Alcohol in the dust clouds. Goddamn stuff is everywhere. Any lousy species ever invents the telescope ….

The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't..

It was a truism that all civilizations were basically neurotic until they made contact with everybody else and found their place within the ever-chan….

I'm from out of town," he said breezily. This was true. He'd never been within a hundred light-years of the place..

Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with wh….

He knew all the answers. Everybody did. Everybody knew everything and everybody knew all the answers. It was just that the enemy seemed to know bette….

"You like music, Mr. Gurgeh?" Hamin asked, leaning over to the man. Gurgeh nodded. "Well, a little does no harm.".

Empires are synonymous with centralized if occasionally schismatized hierarchical power structures in which influence is restricted to an economicall….

The truth is not always useful, not always good. It’s like putting your faith in water. Yes, we need the rain, but too much can sweep you away in a f….

My greatest enemies are Women and the Sea. These things I hate. Women because they are weak and stupid and live in the shadow of men and are nothing ….

I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and pl….

One of your American professors said that to study religion was merely to know the mind of man, but if one truly wanted to know the mind of God, you ….

People were always sorry. Sorry they had done what they had done, sorry they were doing what they were doing, sorry they were going to do what they w….