“What do you want to escape from? This thing called 'reality?”

“Jesus makes you happy in reality. The world makes you happy escaping from reality.”

“If you want a thing--truly want it, want it so badly that you need it as you need air to breathe, then unless you die, you will have it. Why not? It has you. There is no escape. What a cruel and terrible thing escape would be if escape were possible”

“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.”

“Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.”

“I suffer from Irish-Catholic guilt. Guilt is a good reality check. It keeps that ‘do what makes you happy’ thing in check.”