199 quotes
I wonder how many men, hiding their youngness, rise as I do, Saturday mornings, filled with the hope that Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam and Daffy Duck will be there waiting as our one true always and forever salvation?
I just can’t imagine being in a world and not being fascinated with what ideas are doing to us.
The Paris Review interview (2010)
I never have to worry about schedules. Some new thing is always exploding in me, and it schedules me, I don’t schedule it.
The Paris Review interview (2010)
We need something larger than ourselves — that's a real religious activity. That's what space travel can be — relating ourselves to the universe.
Playboy interview (1996)
You are the jailer and the jailed,
You the impaler and the one that your own
Million-fleshed self in dreams by night
do hold in thrall and now at noon must kill.
Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)
We clothe ourselves in flame
And trade new myths for old.
The Greek gods christen us
With ghosts of comet swords;
God smiles and names us thus: "
"Arise! Run! Fly, my Lords!"
In that film Love Story, there’s a line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. Love means saying you’re sorry every day for some little thing or other.
The Paris Review interview (2010)
Then I went in and shot the televisor, that insidious beast, that Medusa, which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little, but myself always going back, going back hoping and waiting until—bang!
The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)
My favorite writers have been those who’ve said things well.
The Paris Review interview (2010)
You can’t write for other people. You can’t write for the left or the right, this religion or that religion, or this belief or that belief. You have to write the way you see things.
The Paris Review interview (2010)
I use a scientific idea as a platform to leap into the air and never come back. This keeps them angry at me.
Playboy interview (1996)
I went home and within days I started to write. I’ve never stopped.
The Paris Review interview (2010)
The problem of the novel is to stay truthful. The short story, if you really are intense and you have an exciting idea, writes itself in a few hours.
The Paris Review interview (2010)
Most of the writers I know in any field, especially science fiction, grew up late. They're so interested in doing what they do and in their science, they don't think about other things.
Playboy interview (1996)
If I was ever a rare fine summer person, that's long ago. Most of us are half-and-half. The August noon in us works to stave off the November chills. We survive by what little Fourth of July wits we've stashed away. But there are times when we're all autumn people.
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962)
The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time. The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen, and the sun burnt Time, that meant everything burnt!
Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do — and they don’t. They have prejudices.
The Paris Review interview (2010)
Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.
Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
Trapped in the blood, athirst for air,
Christ, who once was employed as single Son of God
Now finds Himself among three billion on a billion
Brother sons, their arms thrown wide to grasp and hold
and walk them everywhere
Now weaving this, now weaving that in swoons…
Christ, Old Student in a New School (1972)
I sit there and cry because I feel that I’m not responsible for any of this. It’s from God. And I’m so grateful, so, so grateful.
The Paris Review interview (2010)