But an artist, he realized. Or rather so-called artist. Bohemian. That's closer to it. The artistic life without the talent

Skill is a function of chance. It's an intuitive best-use of chance situations.

He started keeping a journal - had been, in fact, secretly doing so for some time: the furtive act of a deranged person.

For each person there is a sentence--a series of words--which has the power to destroy him ... another sentence exists, another series of words, which will heal the person. If you're lucky you will get the second; but you can be certain of getting the first: that is the way it works. On their own, without training, individuals know how to deal out the lethal sentence, but training is required to deal out the second.

Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane.

In 1955, when I'd write a science-fiction novel, I'd set it in the year 2000. I realised around 1977 that, 'My God, it's getting exactly like those novels we used to write in the 1950s!' Everything's just turning out to be real.

I am basically analytical, not creative; my writing is simply a creative way of handling analysis.

I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist.

I dreamed: I am the fish whose flesh is eaten, and because I am fat, it is good.

The ultimate problem confronting me all my life has been the senseless injury to and neglect of my sister.