“Human life is fiction's only theme.”

“If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There's a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you're dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they're the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not.”

“There are cultures on Earth that are more alien than some of the aliens in SF.More extensive quote: "the theme of immersion into different cultures comes naturally to science fiction, since a major theme of the genre is how humans interact with 'alien' cultures. Yet many of the so-called alien cultures of science fiction, particularly in its younger days, felt myopic, more like Western cultures even than other cultures on our own planet.”

“The deepest, the only theme of human history, compared to which all others are of subordinate importance, is the conflict of scepticism with faith.”

“I began to write fiction on the assumption that the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme.”

“Life is not a theme park, and if it is, the theme is death.”