My first degree came years before my second. I had wanted to be a physicist, but I flunked calculus.

I love biomedical science, I love astronomy, and you can't really do much with those in a fantasy setting.

There are relatively few science fiction or fantasy books with the main character being an old person.

Normal' is a dryer setting.

I regarded drugs as somewhat like rattlesnakes - it's possible to pick one up without getting bit, but why bother?

There is simple ignorance, not knowing, and willful ignorance that refuses to know, that covers the light of knowledge with the dark blanket of bias.

It may be far in the future, but there's some kind of logical way to get from where we are to where the science fiction is.

So when I got out of the military, I went back to school in biology, and earned a biology degree at the University of Texas, and then did some graduate work in it.

Hard to be a physics major at Rice University if you have flunked calculus.

I've taught Sunday school, I've sung in the choir, I directed a choir.

One of my degrees was a science degree in biology.

Are you trying to call me strange, Mandrake?” I pout playfully.He nods. “Your strange is what makes you sensational to me.

Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

My predecessor taxed wealthy, successful people at a higher rate than ever before. And what happened? They left. And what came of it? Did unemployment drop? No.

[Socialistic] economic planning, regulation, and intervention pave the way to totalitarianism by building a power structure that will inevitably be seized by the most power-hungry and unscrupulous.

employers sense in me a denial of their values...they fear me. i suspect that they can see that i am forced to function in a century which i loathe.

If all be a Dream, then he doth but dream that he makes the Question; and so it is not much matter that a waking Man should answer him.

I think I want the best for my country. I can make work that makes us examine some truths about ourselves - that would be more of a contribution. That's how I see it.

Well, I like to write poetry. I'm a published poet.

Happy he whoe'er, content with the common lot, with safe breeze hugs the shore, and, fearing to trust his skiff to the wider sea, with unambitious oar keeps close to the land.

He stared down at me, and i examined his beautiful eyes up close, something i'd never tire of doing.