I esteem his understanding and subtlety highly, but I consider that they have been put to ill use in the greater part of his work, where the author studies things of little use…{Writing about Isaac...

If you need something from somebody always give that person a way to hand it to you.

Is it not a pity when some stylistic subtlety is lost without trace by the reader’s inattention?

Leave it to a dude to roll in with your technique, but use a jackhammer instead of jeweler’s screwdrivers.

A great gift would be a map full of evacuation routes for the city, subtly telling the recipient to get the hell out of town.

Lee assess a subordinate commander as “all lion; no fox.

We can do subtle,” I assured her.”It’s our middle name,” Andrea added.For some odd reason Rene didn’t look convinced.

In preaching conservative doctrine, Goldwater’s jeremiads seemed to be preaching the end of the old world, while Reagan’s pep talks seemed to trumpet the beginning of a new one.

The most dangerous ideas are not those that challenge the status quo. The most dangerous ideas are those so embedded in the status quo, so wrapped in a cloud of inevitability, that we forget they...

He said that it was very difficult to become an astronaut. I said that I knew. You had to become an officer in the air force and you had to take lots of orders and...

Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it’s been shaped into acceptable expository prose.

The man once wrote: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Tolkien had that one mostly right.I stepped forward, let the door bang closed, and snarled,...

Any amount of theology can be smuggled into people’s minds under cover of romance without them knowing it.

If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, the world would be a little better place to live.

Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction. Indeed, all that a wonder story can ever be is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood. The moment it tries to...

The anthology was not a best-seller; art as a weapon seldom is.

The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a...

Subtlety is the mark of confidence and is thus by far the hardest thing for a writer to achieve.

Seemingly minor yet persistent things penetrate the mind over time making it difficult to ever realize the impact; hence, though quite unfortunate, the most dangerous forms of corruption are those that are subtle and below...

That image of a chessboard — an epic contest between two giant players, carefully nudging their pieces around the globe as part of a grand strategy — has indeed become a familiar metaphor for the...