My first thought was always a cigarette. It still is, but I haven't cheated.

The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction.

A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.

You can't really predict the future. All you can do is invent it.

My old English buddy, John Rackham, wrote and told me what made science fiction different from all other kinds of literature - science fiction is written according to the science fiction method.

It's clear that science and science fiction have overlapping populations.

What were we doing here? Traveling hundreds or thousands of light-years, to break our hearts?

That's what life is, just one learning experience after another, and when you're through with all the learning experiences you graduate and what you get for a diploma is, you die.

For someone to be taken seriously it was valuable to have the appearance of someone who deserved to be taken seriously.

I did that for 40 years or more. I never had any writer's block. I got up in the morning, sat down at the typewriter - now, computer - lit up a cigarette.

I'm doing a book, 'Chasing Science,' about the pleasures of science as a spectator sport.

Motherhood is a constant battle of going to bed early so you can catch up on sleep and staying awake so you can enjoy some peace and sanity!

Every director bites the hand that lays the golden egg.

I'm an NRA-certified Expert Rifleman.

When you go to a concert, part of being there is that you're all hearing the same thing. It's about being in a crowd. If you go to a gig and there are two people there, then it's not the same thing.

People who have visions should go see a doctor.

If I see Danny Hillis quoted as an expert on MPP one more time, I'm going to puke.

Faith is taking a step in the same direction that the evidence is pointing.

And the Institute sent me a little film footage of Kinsey himself preparing to do an interview for television to talk about his work, so that was quite valuable for me.

When I'm lying in my bed, I think about life and I think about death. And neither one particularly appeals to me.

Falling in love is a chemical reaction. But it wears off in a year.