There's no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities..

Even the most heartening of philosophical vistas is no match for, say, a toothache, if it happens to be your own..

After a while the business end of writing takes too much of the writing time. Better to pay someone ten percent and find that you're still more than ….

I have decided, it is fruitless. For I am no longer sure of anything concerning my existance. A philosopher is a dead poet and a dying theologian..

Go and copulate with yon purple lizard..

Life is full of doors that don't open when you knock, equally spaced amid those that open when you don't want them to..

The dead are too much with us..

The death of an illusion tends to disconcert..

I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can ….

To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago..

Nothing we did in those days has caused a change." "Because of what we did, things remained as they were, rather than getting worse," I told him..

My favorite form is the short story. From an aesthetics stand point you really have to pare down to the bone. You can't write a throw-away scene..

I don't know that I ever wanted greatness, on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something--or wa….

My mind spun for a second before it drifted, and in that second I knew that of all pleasures a drink of cold water when you are thirsty, liquor when ….

When your bow is broken and your last arrow spent, then shoot, shoot with your whole heart..

The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow befor….

If a building is falling on you, you don't concern yourself with the horn of an approaching car. You deal with the most immediate peril first. That's….

I know, too, that death is the only god who comes when you call..

I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don't think a….

The day of battle dawned pink as the fresh-bitten thigh of a maiden..

Thus did I bear Sir Lancelot de Lac to the Keep of Ganleon, whom I trusted like a brother. That is to say, not at all..