The southward advance of native African farmers with Central African crops halted in Natal, beyond which Central African crops couldn’t grow – with enormous consequences for the recent history of South Africa.

Intellectual comradeship requires that you think your thoughts through to the place where you can make the complex seem simple, the obscure quite clear.

When people ask for time, it’s always for time to say no. Yes has one more letter in it, but it doesn’t take half as long to say.

Heroic people take risks to themselves to help others. There’s nothing heroic about accepting $5 million to go out and run around chasing a ball, although you may show fortitude or those other qualities while...

I saw many aspects of the country which I needed to see in order that I might know what we need to do.

In most conventional novels, God is not allowed to be nuts. Nor are nuts allowed to be God.

Understand, I had absolutely no interest in writing; I wanted to be a Writer.

Comic books were just the means for me to tell the story.

No matter how nice the company one might be with, however, it is never pleasant to have a rifle pointed at one’s back.

I try to write parts for women that are as complicated and interesting as women actually are.

I don’t see any kind of mirror of power, male power, that is, as a form of liberation. I don’t believe in an eye for an eye. I don’t believe this is truly freedom.

What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?

The only limit to your impact is your imagination and commitment.

Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.

The great growling engine of change – technology.

I personally am not conscious of my accent.

I started writing seriously about 1960, at the fairly advanced age of 30.

I’ve wanted somehow to convey to you the sensations – the atmospheric pressure, you might say – of what it is to be seriously a long-term prisoner in an American prison.

Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.

I’m working seven days a week in the fall. I couldn’t possibly keep that up. This is only for the fall. In the last couple of years I’ve tended to do most of my serious...

When we think of the state of the economy, we are not thinking in terms of money flow. We are thinking in terms of the effect on everyday lives of people.

Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life.

A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener’s mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere...

I was surprised that my wife thought it was a good idea, then again with my agent, another woman, then my editor, another woman – in spite of the fact that all three of them...

The object of the law of value is to elucidate the actual exchange relations of commodities.

Owning a home is a keystone of wealth… both financial affluence and emotional security.

Revenge only engenders violence, not clarity and true peace. I think liberation must come from within.

Human folly does not impede the turning of the stars.

Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year – and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!

Practice Golden-Rule 1 of Management in everything you do. Manage others the way you would like to be managed.

People were walking and they had formed the car pools. People were driving folks to work. Others were walking to work, where it wasn’t too far.

Eurasia ended up with the most domesticated animal species in part because it’s the world’s largest land mass and offered the most wild species to begin with.

The Berserkers have been with me for about forty years, and we’re not done yet.

My eyes, my brain seek out escape routes wherever I am sent.

Being an only child and losing both my parents at an early age, I have found that the friends I have made over the years are the people who help me get through life, good...

Good humor is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human burdens. It is the...

I feel not unlike a small boy, waking from a bad dream to find reality not much of an improvement.

I think of myself as an enormously lucky person.

Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.

People keep saying, ‘Oh, you’re getting all these great reviews, that must make you really happy.’ I guess it does, but mostly it’s just a relief.

I’m told my SF is of the hard variety and my Fantasy is romantic but hopefully all the characters are strong and the plots are lively.

How do you grow up in the shadow of a guy-I want to talk about the movie in a second-but how do you grow up in the shadow of a guy who really is a...

In the last James Bond movie, the villain was a culture captain, a tycoon of culture, a Murdoch figure. It’s not as if people don’t know what is going on.

One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything...

People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine.

Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it.

Land of opportunity, land for the huddled masses where would the opportunity have been without the genocide of those Old Guard, bristling Indian tribes?

We study the injustices of history for the same reason that we study genocide, and for the same reason that psychologists study the minds of murderers and rapists… to understand how those evil things came...

Actually ideas are everywhere. It’s the paperwork, that is, sitting down and thinking them into a coherent story, trying to find just the right words, that can and usually does get to be labor.

Try out your ideas by visualizing them in action.