Hope is a psychological mechanism unaffected by external realities.
There is no magic. There is only knowledge, more or less hidden.
You believe me wise because I taught you once, but I have not been north, as you have. You have seen (what) I have never seen…You flatter me by asking my opinion.
It seems to me that you can almost define civilization by saying it’s people who are not willing to hurt other people because the other people are different.
Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real.
We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.
Reality is a crutch for people who can’t handle science fiction.
My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.
I was miserable before I knew I was no longer happy
We are like children who look at print and see a serpent in the last letter but one, and a sword in the last.
Once or twice I saw evidence that rats had been nesting among the books, rearranging them to make snug two and three-level homes for themselves and smearing dung on the covers to form the rude characters of their speech.
We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard defining edges.
That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin.
You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you’re writing.
What a man knows hardly matters. It is what he does.
If you have a machine with three or four parts, you can shake them up in a box and it’s still pretty clear what’s there. If you have a machine with 10,000 parts and you shake them up in a box, what you have is a box of junk.
Time itself is a thing, so it seems to me, that stands solidly like a fence of iron palings with its endless row of years; and we flow past like Gyoll, on our way to a sea from which we shall return only as rain.
It is well, I think, for us to learn to tell evil from good; but it has its price, as everything does. We leave our evil friend behind.
When a gift is deserved, it is not a gift but a payment.
My rule is never save bits. They get the way, and you don’t think of anything new. Put ’em in. Make a big mess.
Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard.