Quotes About Exploration

Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about.

I ate them like salad, books were my sandwich for lunch, my tiffin and dinner and midnight munch. I tore out the pages, ate them with salt, doused them with relish, gnawed on the bindings, turned the chapters with my tongue! Books by the dozen, the score and the billion. I carried so many home I was hunchbacked for years. Philosophy, art history, politics, social science, the poem, the essay, the grandiose play, you name 'em, I ate 'em.

Where would you like to go, what would you really like to do with your life? See Istanbul, Port Said, Nairobi, Budapest. Write a book. Smoke too many cigarettes. Fall off a cliff but get caught in a tree halfway down. Get shot at a few times in a dark alley on a Morrocan midnight. Love a beautiful woman.

Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.

His library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore.

What's the point of having a library full of books you've already read?

It is good to renew one's wonder, said the philosopher. Space travel has again made children of us all.

Hello! He said hello and then said, What are you up to now? I'm still crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it. I don't think I'd like that, he said. You might if you tried. I never have. She licked her lips. Rain even tastes good. What do you do, go around trying everything once? he asked. Sometimes twice.

My gosh, if you're going away, we got a million things to talk about! All the things we would've talked about next month, the month after! Praying mantises, zeppelins, acrobats, sword swallowers!

Stand at the top of a cliff and jump off and build your wings on the way down.

When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.

I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going.

I'm interested in having fun with ideas, throwing them up in the air like confetti and then running under them.

Most of us can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for... are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book.

To feed your Muse, then, you should always have been hungry about life since you were a child. If not, it is a little late to start.

Do you ever wonder if--well, if there are people living on the third planet?' 'The third planet is incapable of supporting life,' stated the husband patiently. 'Our scientists have said there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere.

I'd like to know what a place is like when I'm not there . I'd like to be sure .

We travel for romance, we travel for architecture, and we travel to be lost.

When rivers flooded, when fire fell from the sky, what a fine place the library was, the many rooms, the books. With luck, no one found you. How could they!--when you were off to Tanganyika in '98, Cairo in 1812, Florence in 1492!?

I shall remain on Mars and read a book.

He says I'm a regular onion! I keep him busy peeling away the layers.

Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that, shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ASS.