I got into science fiction by being interested in astronomy first.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

I like talking. I like acting.

When I am playing baseball, I give it all that I have on the ball field. When the ball game is over, I certainly don’t take it home. My little girl who is sitting out there wouldn’t know the difference between a third strike and a foul ball. We don’t talk about baseball at home.

I like to read books. I like to listen to music.

Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves – and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either.

Playing bridge is a pretty old fashioned thing in a way that I really like.

I was a very keen reader of science fiction.

It is better to travel well than to arrive.

From the point of view of basic physics, the most interesting phenomena are, of course, in the new places, the places where the rules do not work – not the places where they do work! That is the way in which we discover new rules.

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today – but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.

I have a nice office. I have a nice house… So I’m not denying myself some great things. I just don’t happen to have expensive hobbies.

Of course humans like to explore, and we should. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s more than that. It’s essential for your children and your children’s children.

Adventures are to the adventurous.

With all the travel we’re doing to cold-weather cities, your mind definitely starts to wander. It gets you away from the game. Even when you arrive in a city, you’re tempted to just sit in your hotel and rest. Sometimes it’s nice to just get out and walk around, to see what’s there.

Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

I’ve got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

We’ve gotta become the Martians. I’m a Martian – I tell you to become Martians. And we’ve gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever.

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

The mountains are calling and I must go.

Science sent the Hubble telescope out into space, so it could capture light and the absence thereof, from the very beginning of time. And the telescope really did that. So now we know that there was once absolutely nothing, such a perfect nothing that there wasn’t even nothing or once.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

I’ve experienced great things, I’ve experienced great tragedies. I’ve done almost everything I could possibly ever imagine doing, but I just know that there’s more.

Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.

In less than a hundred years, we have found a new way to think of ourselves. From sitting at the center of the universe, we now find ourselves orbiting an average-sized sun, which is just one of millions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.

I hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That’s the pitch. We’ll see.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

I had not expected ‚A Brief History of Time‘ to be a best seller. It was my first popular book and aroused a great deal of interest. Initially, many people found it difficult to understand. I therefore decided to try to write a new version that would be easier to follow.

Hong Kong is a wonderful, mixed-up town where you’ve got great food and adventure. First and foremost, it’s a great place to experience China in a relatively accessible way.

‚Fahrenheit 451‘ postulates a lot of things I didn’t want to have happen.

I’m interested in two things. I’m interested in truth and I’m interested in fairness.

I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth.

Never lose a holy curiosity.

A zero-gravity flight is a first step toward space travel.

I love to travel, but hate to arrive.

If you look at ‚Blade Runner,‘ it’s been cut sixteen ways from Sunday, and there are all kinds of different versions of it.

Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.

Hobbies are apt to run away with us, you know; it doesn’t do to be run away with. We must keep the reins.

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they were found because it was possible to find them.

As for hobbies, I don’t really read or watch TV.

Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

I don’t like to be bored.

I do things I love doing. Sometimes that is maybe going out to have a drink with friends, going out partying or whatever.

The ‚free-floating intellectual‘ may occupy himself with problems because of their inherent interest and importance, perhaps to little effect.

Once people are aware of your presence, and perhaps vaguely intrigued, you need to stir their interest before it settles on someone else.

Fashion has become so whatever. I don’t think there are any stones left to unturn.

As soon as I arrived in the Indies, in the first island which I found, I took some of the natives by force, in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts. And so it was that they soon understood us, and we them, either by speech or by signs, and they have been very serviceable.

I have come to believe that this is a mighty continent which was hitherto unknown.

With all of their benefits, and there are many, one of the things I regret about e-books is that they have taken away the necessity of trawling foreign bookshops or the shelves of holiday houses to find something to read. I’ve come across gems and stinkers that way, and both can be fun.

I think all documentaries leave out areas of people’s lives. Which is good. There are areas that need not be explored.

Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.

The smaller the planets are, they are, other things being equal, of so much the greater density; for so the powers of gravity on their several surfaces come nearer to equality. They are likewise, other things being equal, of the greater density, as they are nearer to the sun.

Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.