70 Quotes by Robert Sheckley

I’m not too fond of the hard work and the constant battle with self-doubt that goes on when I write, but I figure that’s part of the territory.

It takes me a long time to get with a landscape. It took me 20 years before I wrote anything about Ibiza, and I haven’t written about Oregon yet, although I’ve been there 20 years – possibly I’m almost due.

Once you find you can’t walk as far and as fast as you were able, life becomes more complicated.

I’m quite influenced in this by one of my heroes, Montaigne, who thought a man’s real task was to render as honest an account of himself as he could.

Very well, you possess free will; but now you must use your free will to enslave yourself to God and to us.

A lot of us don’t want to be quite that serious about world problems. Our life is there to enjoy, not to be an eternal dissident, eternally unhappy with how things are and with the state of mankind.

I would like to do a novel where some curse turns that into how the world really is – a blessing or a curse, I don’t know which.

He learned. The machines taught on deep, unconscious levels. The machines intertwined their lessons with the basic drives, weaving a pattern of learned behavior with the life instinct. They taught, then blocked off conscious knowledge of the lessons, sealed it – and fused it. What had he been taught? For the social good, you must be your own policeman and witness. You must assume responsibility for any crime which might conceivably be yours.

I’m not so interested any more in how a great deal of science fiction goes. It goes into things like Star Wars and Star Trek which all go excellent in their own way.