“Once you put a thought into the world, it can be disagreed with, but it can’t be unthought.”

An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship – it is a crime against our nature as human beings.

The lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it’s teaching.

I write books I’d enjoy reading, I’m the reader standing behind my shoulder.

Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.

Liberate yourself, because no one else is going to liberate you.

I have never really thought of myself as a writer about religion. And I think one of the things that happened to me as a result of all that is that I think it did for some people, many people, obscure the kind of writer that I actually am.

Every time you finish a book, you have a terrible feeling that there’s just never going to be another one. But fortunately, so far, the next one has always shown up.

Between the adored and the adorer falls the shadow.

I’ve been worrying about God a little bit lately. It seems like he’s been in a bad mood. And I think it has to do with the quality of lovers he’s been getting.

In the cookie of life, friends are the chocolate chips.

From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.

Faith without doubt is addiction.

Reality is a question of perspective.

What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.

If you take a look at history, you will find that the understanding of what is good and evil has always existed before the individual religions. The religions were only invented by people afterwards, in order to express this idea.

Science fiction is always a vehicle for ideas. It’s the form which allows either movies or books to be an exploration of how we should live.

Sometimes in this life, under the stress of an exceptional emotion, people do say what they think.

If any man thinks ill of you, do not be angry with him, for you are worse than he thinks you to be.

I was never motivated by money. I think above all else about the happiness of my family, regardless of money.

When God says go forward, don’t even think about standing still.

Does not Eternity appear dreadful to you. I often get to thinking of it and it seems so dark to me that I almost wish there was no Eternity. To think that we must forever live and never cease to be. It seems as if Death would be a relief to so endless a state of existence.

I do believe we slander Christ when we think we are to draw the people by something else but the preaching of Christ crucified.

The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength.

Just close your eyes—and think of England.