“In general, we’re least aware of what our minds do best.”

“General fiction is pretty much about ways that people get into problems and screw their lives up. Science fiction is about everything else.”

“A computer is like a violin. You can imagine a novice trying first a phonograph and then a violin. The latter, he says, sounds terrible. That is the argument we have heard from our humanists and most of our computer scientists. Computer programs are good, they say, for particular purposes, but they aren’t flexible. Neither is a violin, or a typewriter, until you learn how to use it.”

“You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.”

“If the brain was simple enough to be understood - we would be too simple to understand it!”

“Poetry is the least imposition on silence in a world of chatter.”

“Try to write poems at least one person in the room will hate.”