“The idea of a Supreme Being who creates a world in which one creature is designed to eat another in order to subsist, and then pass a law saying, "Thou shalt not kill," is so monstrously, immeasurably, bottomlessly absurd that I am at a loss to understand how mankind has entertained or given it house room all this long.”

“We are not primarily put on this earth to see through one another, but to see one another through. ”

“What baffles me is the comfort people find in the idea that somebody dealt this mess. Blind and meaningless chance seems to me so much more congenial - or at least less horrible. Prove to me that there is a God and I will really begin to despair.”

“I made a tentative conclusion. It seemed from all of this that uppermost among human joys is the negative one of restoration: not going to the stars, but learning that one may stay where one is.”

“I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.”

“It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.”

“The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.”