First of all, you're dead. Secondly, I cut off your head. Thirdly... yes, I know that rhymed, you really don't have to tell me.
The will of God or the lunacy of man - it seemed to him that you could take your choice, if you wanted a good enough reason for most things. Or, alternatively (and he thought of it as he contemplated...
We clearly were on the same team. You killed over a dozen of the bastards and I wasn't about to reward you by killing you. They deserved it.
There are rules to everything, even if nobody made them up, even if nobody calls it a game. And if you want things to work out well, it's best to know the rules and only break them if you're playing a...
That's all science fiction was ever about. Hating the way things are, wanting to make things different.
Reading wasn't an attempt to educate myself. It was my chief escape from a world that, although gorgeous in landscape and rich with mountain culture, didn't provide what I needed—the promise of advent...
Like the original concept, the stormrider had rectangular blades, sixteen of them radiating out from the hub, each one a flat lattice of struts twenty-five kilometers long, made from the toughest stee...
Is it painful? the groundskeeper asked. I am asking for science.
I don't speak, I operate a machine called language. It creaks and groans, but is mine own.
He was either right or wrong. Worrying didn't make it any better. She let herself drift off with the scent of him in her lungs, with the knowledge that she was loved in her head and heart.
Bowman was aware of some changes in his behavior patterns; it would have been absurd to expect anything else in the circumstances. He could no longer tolerate silence; except when he was sleeping, or...
A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.
A person is what he says and does; that's how you learn whether his reputation was earned or manufactured.
Science fiction is something that happen - but usually you wouldn't want it to. Fantasy is something that happen - though often you only wish that it could.
[T]he only means I have to stop ignorant snobs from behaving towards genre fiction with snobbish ignorance is to not reinforce their ignorance and snobbery by lying and saying that when I write SF it...
Conquest is made from the ashes of one's enemies.
Metaphorically, Tom said, if you take knowledge as light, and ignorance as dark, there does sometimes seem to be a real presence to the dark -- to ignorance. Something more tactile and muscley than ju...
Everybody wants to own the end of the world.
Scent is like a kiss of time travel which transports one to an ancient memorable occasion.
The journey is the reward.