Algis Budrys

"Engineers do not particularly like PR men."

"That was the way things worked out: you got a certain fair share of good breaks from life, and you had no right to expect things your way every time."

"It isn’t given to very many men to have their dreams come true in their lifetimes."

"“Smart isn’t ‘Can you do it, is it good to do?’ Smart is ‘Can you make ’em believe what you’re doing is real?’ And real is ‘Can you get financing for it?’"

"There are various uses for time, and I have better ones than this."

"He saw Hawks, grunted, hefted the bottle and said, “I hate the stuff. It tastes lousy, it makes me gag, it stinks, and it burns my mouth. But they keep putting it in your hands, and they keep saying ‘…"

"He wondered, as he often had during his life, at people’s ability to think so intricately and to still be wrong."

"I had had a good life. A somewhat shorter one than I had anticipated, but I had had the money, I had had the girls, and nobody told me what to do. Is there, really, anything else? Are you sure?"