Words Are My Matter: Writings on Life and Books

I do not use the word myth lightly, to mean fantasizing or falsification, but in its proper sense: myth as a necessary story, concerning realities important to a people, and leading to moral perception and interpretation.

Oh money what wonders you perform (and how rarely are you so well spent).

The whole garden is imaginary, but the toads in it are real.

I see art as a community enterprise both in place and time, and believe that art that leads to more art is more valuable than sterile excellence.

that is a good description not only of the piece itself, but of the characteristic narrative ploy of science fiction: to be sober in imagining and to tell the incredible credibly.

If you had unlimited access to a drug that would give you a perfect high for hours or days at a time, at any time, without doing you any bodily harm, and with the enthusiastic approval of your entire society, would you be likely to abstain from it? You’re not allowed to. You must consume your daily dose of soma because it’s what holds everything to

Science fiction lends itself readily to imaginative subversion of any status quo.

We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.

We’re social animals, but we crave solitude to make our souls. Americans cherish their opinions at least as much as their souls, and opinions allowed to take root where nobody’s around to crowd them grow great and very strange.