“I was sitting in a bar one night, talking rather loudly about a person I hated - and a man with a beard sat down beside me, and he said amiably, "Why don't you have him killed?""I've thought of it," I said. "Don't think I haven't.""Let me help you to think about it clearly," he said. His voice was deep. His beak was large. He wore a black mohair suit and a black string tie. His little red mouth was obscene. "You're looking at the situation through a red haze of hate," he said. "What you need are the calm, wise services of a murder counsellor, who can plan the job for you, and save you an unnecessary trip to the hot squat.""Where do I find one?" I said."You've found one, " he said."You're crazy," I said."That's right," he said. "I've been in and out mental institutions all my life. That makes my services all the more appealing. If I were to testify against you, your lawyer would have no trouble establishing that I was a well-known nut, and a convicted felon besides.""What was the felony?" I said."A little thing - practising medicine without a license," he said."Not murder then?" I said."No," he said, "but that doesn't mean I haven't murdered. As a matter of fact, I murdered almost everyone who had anything to do with convicting me of practising medicine without a license." He looked at the ceiling, did some arithmetic. "Twenty-two, twenty-three - maybe more," he said. "Maybe more. I've killed them over a period of years, and I haven't read the paper every single day.”

“I was sitting in a bar one night, talking rather loudly about a person I hated - and a man with a beard sat down beside me, and he said amiably, "Why don't you have him killed?""I've thought of it," I said. "Don't think I haven't.""Let me help you to think about it clearly," he said. His voice was deep. His beak was large. He wore a black mohair suit and a black string tie. His little red mouth was obscene. "You're looking at the situation through a red haze of hate," he said. "What you need are the calm, wise services of a murder counsellor, who can plan the job for you, and save you an unnecessary trip to the hot squat.""Where do I find one?" I said."You've found one, " he said."You're crazy," I said."That's right," he said. "I've been in and out mental institutions all my life. That makes my services all the more appealing. If I were to testify against you, your lawyer would have no trouble establishing that I was a well-known nut, and a convicted felon besides.""What was the felony?" I said."A little thing - practising medicine without a license," he said."Not murder then?" I said."No," he said, "but that doesn't mean I haven't murdered. As a matter of fact, I murdered almost everyone who had anything to do with convicting me of practising medicine without a license." He looked at the ceiling, did some arithmetic. "Twenty-two, twenty-three - maybe more," he said. "Maybe more. I've killed them over a period of years, and I haven't read the paper every single day.”

“Yes, and our sister's sons are candid now about a creepy business which used to worry them a lot: They cannot find their mother or their father in their memories anywhere - not anywhere. The goat farmer, whose name is James Carmalt Adams, Jr., said this about it to me, tapping his forehead with his fingertips: "It isn't the museum, it should be." The museums in children's minds, I think, automatically empty themselves in times of utmost horror - to protect the children from eternal grief.”

“‎The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”

“Skyscraper National Park”

“Flashlight beams danced crazily”

“My God, what have they done to you? This isn't a man, it's a broken kite.”

“The 2 prime movers in the Universe are Time and Luck.As the tag line of my favorite dirty joke would have it: "Keep your hat on. We could wind up miles from here.”

“Moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but the world's champions.”

“When things are going really well, we should take time to notice it.”

“When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.”

“So the people of Earth thought they had instructions from the Creator of the Universe Himself to wreck the joint. But they were going at it too slowly for the Elders, so the Elders put it into the people's heads that they themselves were the life forms that were supposed to spread out through the Universe. This was a preposterous ideas, of course. In the words of a nameless author: "How could all that meat, needing so much food and water and oxygen, and with bowel movements so enormous, expect to survive a trip of any distance whatsoever through the limitless void of outer space? It was a miracle that such ravenous and cumbersome giants could make a roundtrip for a 6-pack to the nearest grocery store.”