Before I was reading science fiction, I read Hemingway. Farewell to Arms was my first adult novel that said not everything ends well. It was one of those times where reading has meant a great deal to me, in terms of my development - an insight came from that book.

I've always thought of science fiction as being, at some level, a 19th-century business.

You must give to get, You must sow the seed, before you can reap the harvest.

Do you think that you shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed before you?

One learns to itch where one can scratch.

To know is to control.

With a definite, step-by-step plan - ah, what a difference it makes! You cannot fail, because each step carries you along to the next, like a track.

Every suggested idea produces a corresponding physical reaction. Every idea constantly repeated ends by being engraved upon the brain, provoking the act which corresponds to that idea.

To begin with, you must realize that any idea accepted by the brain is automatically transformed into an action of some sort. It may take seconds or minutes or longer - but ideas always produce a reaction of some sort.