Quotes About Author

One was a fiftyish, red-bearded North Beach poet named Joaquin Schwartz. ("A dear man," Mrs. Madrigal confided to Mary Ann, "but I wish he'd learn to use capital letters.")

A stately row of Monterey pines lined the highway on either side of the security gates.

in this universe we live in. Stranger things have been known to happen.

First-class fiction is, and must be, in the final resort autobiographical.

No one has ever questioned the credentials of a critic who writes a rave notice.

But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

no on of intelligence resents the inevitable.

Good morning, Dr. Chandra. This is Hal. I am ready for my first lesson.

An author should never turn down the opportunity for a new experience

The trouble with cliché's, some philosopher remarked, probably with a yawn, is that they are so boringly true. But love at first sight is never boring.

Even a doomed man might reasonably be expected to take some slight interest in a few thousand square meters of gems. He

throbbed into silence… "And that's the way it was—goodbye, wonderful and terrible Twentieth

He was now probably the world's leading authority on the greatest explorer of all time

Tranquillity was not a state of mind that could be sustained for long.

Yet there was also something slightly spooky about them. Norton could never understand how men with advanced scientific and technical training could possibly believe some of the things he had heard Cosmo Christers state as incontrovertible fact.

Curnow had once remarked that Dr. Chandra had the sort of physique that could only be achieved by centuries of starvation.

That suggested two possibilities. It was either too unintelligent to understand him—or it was very intelligent indeed, with its own powers of choice and volition. In that case, he must treat it as an equal. Even then he might underestimate it—but it would bear him no resentment, for conceit was not a vice from which robots often suffered.

I thought this couldn't happen in astronomy. Isn't celestial mechanics supposed to be an exact science? So we poor backward biologists were always being told.

Didn't somebody once say 'Politics is the art of the possible'?" "Quite true—which is why only second-rate minds go into it. Genius likes to challenge the impossible.

President of the Society for Creative Anachronisms.

News that is sufficiently bad somehow carries its own guarantee of truth. Only good reports need confirmation.

Stormgren had walked to his desk and was fidgeting with his famous uranium paperweight. He was not nervous—merely undecided.

But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger. A.C.C.

Well, that's a relief. You know that I have the greatest possible enthusiasm for this mission." "I'm sure of it. Now please let me have