We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?

In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

It's lack that gives us inspiration. It's not fullness.

If you want to be a good writer, be the best writer in the world. That's what I've done.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.