“This side of Nirvana, there is no such escape for any of us as far as I know.”

“I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know. God may call any one of us to respond to some far away problem or support those who have been so called. But we are finite and he will not call us everywhere or to support every worthy cause. And real needs are not far from us.”

“The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle.”

“If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side! ”

“There's no real objection to escapism, in the right places... We all want to escape occasionally. But science fiction is often very far from escapism, in fact you might say that science fiction is escape into reality... It's a fiction which does concern itself with real issues: the origin of man; our future. In fact I can't think of any form of literature which is more concerned with real issues, reality.”

“I don’t know how I stay alive. What I do know is that there is a light, far above us, that goes out when we die,and that in Hell there is a gray tulip that grows without any sun. It reminds me of everything I failed at,and I water it carefully. It is all I have to remind me of you.”