Among my most prized possessions are the words that I have never spoken.

If it isn't a wonderful story first, who cares how 'important' it is? (Ibid.)

Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it.

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration. (from the introduction to the story collection Future on Fire, where he …

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.

I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.

He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.