“A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere.”

“If women had power, what would men be but women who can't bear children? And what would women be but men who can?...I mean, men give her [a queen] power. They let her use their power. But it isn't hers, is it? It isn't because she's a woman that she's powerful, but despite it.”

“The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. If this machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it.”

“I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.”

“the truth is a matter of the imagination”

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”

“Is it any wonder that no truly respectable society has ever trusted its artists?”