“Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.”

The simplest questions are the most difficult.

I think anybody incapable of changing his mind is crazy.

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.

I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it.

I’m creating an imaginary — it’s always imaginary — world in which I would like to live.

What a horrible loutish planet this is. the dominant species consists of sadistic morons, faces bearing the hideous lineaments of spiritual famine swollen with stupid hate. Hopeless rubbish.

As soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape.

Black magic operates most effectively in preconscious, marginal areas. Casual curses are the most effective.

A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on.

There are no innocent bystanders, What are they doing there in the first place?

If, after spending time with a person, you feel as though you’ve lost a quart of plasma, avoid that person in the future.

You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.

The world is now a virus.

Paranoia is just having the right information.

I bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. Whenever you are threatened by a hostile presence, you emit a thick cloud of love like an octopus squirts out ink.

There couldn’t be a society of people who didn’t dream. They’d be dead in two weeks.

I’d love to go and visit the Mosque in Mecca again, just for the sheer beauty of it, not for God – much the way a non-Catholic might go to Vatican City because of the beauty of the buildings and the artifacts.

I can play with that opportunity or not. This is my right, or poetic license, as someone who is building an artefact of fantasy – this implicit pact with the reader is my starting point.