Robert Silverberg

"To devote oneself to vigilance when the enemy is an imaginary one is idle, and to congratulate oneself for looking long and well for a foe that is not coming is foolish and sinful. My life has been a …"

"But, though he trusted his intuitive judgments, he rarely acted on them until he had had time to make a more rational reconnaissance."

"This time of year, the whole crazy city could go in one big fire storm. There were times that he almost wished that it would. He hated this smoggy, tawdry Babylon of a city, its endless tangle of free…"

"Architecturally, the town looked like the worst of all possible cheap-and-sleazy tract developments, but the psychic texture it projected was even more depressing, more like that of one of those ghast…"

"She seems fond of him. Getting to know him better, as though she has surmounted the barrier of cultural differences that made him seem so alien to her before. And he the same with her. The separations…"

"The process of changing your mind is a tricky one. You start at Position A, which you hold with stern stubbornness, resolving never to give it up. Then you start to question your original resolution. …"

"“What matters,” he said earnestly, “is the display of skill, not the manners of the audience."

"“All my life,” said Schweiz, “has been a quest for plausible reasons to believe in what I know to be irrational."