After you finish a book, you know, you’re dead. But no one knows you’re dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.

It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.

Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

Treat your children like the blessings they are or don’t have them at all.

A word after a word after a word is power.

I do sometimes look back at things I’ve written in the past, and think, ‚I just don’t remember being the person who wrote that.‘

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one’s children will become than for the children one’s ‚mature‘ critics often are.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

For a long time, I had the idea that I would do a certain amount of work the best I could, and then I would reach a comfort zone, and I wouldn’t be pushed to write more. I would become a different person. It’s a surprise to me that this hasn’t happened. Your body ages, but your mind is the same.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn’t think I could read, much less write.

At age nine, I got a paper route. Sixty-six papers had to be delivered to sixty-six families every day. I also had to collect thirty cents a week from each customer. I owed the paper twenty cents per customer per week, and got to keep the rest. When I didn’t collect, the balance came out of my profit. My average income was six dollars a week.

I know I have a responsibility to the fans.

We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we’re probably not going to see.

I lived a sloppy life. So I took very small increments in my life. I started making my bed. I started cleaning my room. There were dishes in the sink. It started off with doing small house chores. I saw that the yard needed to be mowed. So instead of being told it needed to be mowed, I would mow it.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

When you’re around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you’re supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.

Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.

Many shoulder heavy burdens of righteous responsibility which, on occasion, seem so difficult to bear. I have heard those challenges termed impossible.

I get really motivated when I put on the India jersey. It is a responsibility, so I want to perform in the best way I can.

He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.

I’ve only written one science-fiction book: ‚Fahrenheit 451.‘ That book is a book based on real facts and my hatred of people who destroy books.

I could have been a cult writer if I’d kept writing surrealistic novels. But I wanted to break into the mainstream, so I had to prove that I could write a realistic book.

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.

I am a professional sportswriter, among other things, and I take the games seriously. It is only one of my many powerful addictions, and I don’t mind admitting any of them.

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

I love a good Dorothy L. Sayers.

We need someone with superb judgement in their own right because, yes, a president can hire the best advisors on Earth, but I guarantee you this: Five advisors will give five different opinions. And it is the president – and the president alone – who always makes the final call.

A lot of times, people make other people responsible for their joy: ‚You’re not making me happy, you’re not doing this, you’re not doing that.‘

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

I don’t do research. I never have.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the ‚Pilgrim’s Progress,‘ my first collection was of John Bunyan’s works in separate little volumes.

The more responsibility the Scoutmaster gives his patrol leaders, the more they will respond.

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.

If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

Do your duty and a little more and the future will take care of itself.

It’d be stupid for me to sit here and say that there aren’t kids who look up to me, but my responsibility is not to them. I’m not a baby sitter.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

When it comes to the qualifications that we should demand of our president, to start with, we need someone who will take the job seriously.

Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, ‚No. No, I’m finished. Bye.‘ And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won’t do that.