Quotes
The ocean moans over dead men's bones.
The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born.
I like to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the desire to use its own wings.
Gracious to all, to none subservient, Without offense he spoke the word he meant.
Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades.
Books that have become classics - books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal - always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.
A man is known by the company his mind keeps.
Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.
When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults.
Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.
Keep violence in the mind where it belongs.
It is comparatively easy to become a writer; staying a writer, resisting formulaic work, generating one's own creativity - that's a much tougher matter.
I'm lucky that SFWA has such a short memory. I was always the Young Turk, the gadfly. Part of the New Wave, although I didn't fit in there either! I spent years, and two histories, putting the so-called Old Guard in their place, and now I'm one of them!
I can't help believing that these things that come from the subconscious mind have a sort of truth to them. It may not be a scientific truth, but it's psychological truth.
I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity.
Feedback is a pleasant thing. I get a lot of letters from unexpected people in unexpected places.
Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.
You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.
When people are laughing, they're generally not killing one another.
ORIGINALITY is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe - you can't take a taxi.