Quote collection
762 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Miraculously, smoke curled out of his own mouth, his nose, his ears, his eyes, as if his soul had been extinguished within his lungs at the very moment the sweet pumpkin gave up its incensed ghost."
"Science-fiction balances you on the cliff. Fantasy shoves you off."
"Good to evil seems evil"
"When a man talks from his heart, in his moment of truth, he speaks poetry."
"Stuff your eyes with wonder."
"I am a librarian. I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt. When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week. I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school."
"Man has always been half-monster, half-dreamer."
"The trouble with a lot of people who try to write is they intellectualize about it. That comes after. The intellect is given to us by God to test things once they’re done, not to worry about things ahead of time."
"Last night I thought about all the kerosene I've used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I'd never even thought that thought before...It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life, and then I come along in two minutes and boom! it's all over."
"Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations."
"...I mean, you don't just love people, you must LOVE them with exclamation points."
"You don’t question Providence. If you can’t have the reality, a dream is just as good."
"A book is a loaded gun in the house next door...Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?"
"We have too many cellphones. We've got too many internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now."
"Facts quite often, I fear to confess, like lawyers, put me to sleep at noon. Not theories, however. Theories are invigorating and tonic. Give me an ounce of fact and I will produce you a ton of theory by tea this afternoon. That is, after all, my job."
"I did what most writers do at their beginnings: emulated my elders, imitated my peers, thus turning away from any possibility of discovering truths beneath my skin and behind my eye."
"Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed."
"Well, after all, this is the age of the disposable tissue. Blow your nose on a person, wad them, flush them away, reach for another, blow, wad, flush. Everyone using everyone else's coattails. How are you supposed to root for the home team when you don't even have a program or know the names? For that matter, what color jersey's are they reading as they trot out to the feild?"
"Life should be touched, not strangled."
"We must move into the universe. Mankind must save itself. We must escape the danger of war and politics. We must become astronauts and go out into the universe and discover the God in ourselves."