“Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country.”

To think that realistic fiction is by definition superior to imaginative fiction is to think imitation is superior to invention.

But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

I don’t think ‘science fiction’ is a very good name for it, but it’s the name that we’ve got. It is different from other kinds of writing, I suppose, so it deserves a name of its own.

A panda walks into a tea room and ordered a salad and ate it. Then it pulled out a pistol, shot the man in the next table dead, and walked out.

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.

as a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude, your loneliness.

Grieving, like being blind, is a strange business; you have to learn how to do it. We seek company in mourning, but after the early bursts of tears, after the praises have been spoken, and the good days remembered, and the lament cried, and the grave closed, there is no company in grief. It is a burden borne alone.

The book is all there, all at once, between its covers. But if you want to read the story and understand it, you must begin with the first page, and go forward, always in order. So the universe would be a very great book, and we would be very small readers.

Life–evolution–the whole universe of space/time, matter/energy–existence itself–is essentially change.

The world is in balance . To light a candle is to cast a shadow.

The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well.

When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.

That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself?

We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries-the realists of a larger reality.

It doesn’t have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable.

Whatever’s inside making me what I am, it’s like film. Film only works in the dark. Tear it all open and let in the light and you kill it.

Proximity to the crowd, to the majority view, spells the death of creativity. For a soul can create only when alone, and some are chosen for the flowering that takes place in the dark avenues of night.

We are content in the ‘given’ in sensation’s quest. We have been metamorphosised from a mad body dancing on hillsides to a pair of eyes staring in the dark.

Light can penetrate any amount of darkness but no amount of darkness can penetrate light.

Mathematicians, like cows in the dark, all look alike to me.

Dark and sour humours, especially those which have a spice of malevolence in them, are vastly disagreeable. Such men have no music in their souls.

Strive with all your hearts, raise up your voices and shout, until this dark world be filled with light.

I didn’t want to see you, but you invaded my world. Every dark corner you found a way in bringing light to the lifeless and lost.” Eva