Quotes

Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.

Here dead lie we because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; but young men think it is, and we were young.

Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.

In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.

The laws of God, the laws of man he may keep that will and can; not I: let God and man decree laws for themselves and not for me.

The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic.

If a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.

In a sense, there's a great truth to that, but, also I was a great reader.

It's difficult for me to feel that a solid page without the breakups of paragraphs can be interesting. I break mine up perhaps sooner than I should in terms of the usage of the English language.

I don't recall having any self-awareness about the intricacy of my stories.

Well, first of all, going off with dianetics was based upon a thought of mine.

I figure that that has a ten year cycle. At the end of that ten years, I began to get worried that I would run into what is known as the writer's block, the feeling of not being able to do these things.

My theory was that what I had to do was make a study of human behavior.

But, somewhere in there, I did have the thought that this really fits in with my thinking about what I wanted to do; with what has to be done by a writer in order to stay alive as a writer.

It came about as follows: over the years when I was involved in dianetics, I wrote the beginnings of many stories. I would get an idea, and then write the beginning, and then never touch it again.

I first read science fiction in the old British Chum annual when I was about 12 years old.

Chum was a British boy's weekly which, at the end of the year was bound into a single huge book; and the following Christmas parents bought it as Christmas presents for male children.

The encouragement I got from Campbell was a quick check and praise. Once the Space Beagle was launched on its mission, it seemed natural for it to breed additional thoughts.

In those days I was new to covers; merely felt pleased that a story of mine had been honored. I later met Rogers who did some of my early covers and I was impressed with him.

You have to remember that I was a bright but simple fellow from Canada who seldom, if ever, met another writer, and then only a so-called literary type that occasionally sold a story and meanwhile worked in an office for a living.

I had casually rented an apartment that cost $75 a month because I expected my writing to pay my way.

Recruiting Station was a story that came as the result of many anxious awakenings during many nights.

The true Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language and offers no other signs.

The Empress has been connected with the ideas of universal fecundity and in a general sense with activity.