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"In a sense, there's a great truth to that, but, also I was a great reader."
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"Many writers, especially male ones, have told us that it is the decease of the father which opens the prospect of one's own end, and affords an unobstructed view of the undug but awaiting grave that says 'you're next.' Unfilial as this may seem, that was not at all so in my own case. It was only when I watched Alexander [my own son] being born that I knew at once that my own funeral director had very suddenly, but quite unmistakably, stepped onto the stage. I was surprised by how calmly I took this, but also by how reluctant I was to mention it to my male contemporaries."

"I have a very strong sense that we only know where we are by looking clearly at where we've come from."

"The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence."

"A real value of our lives is in how we use our time as we journey from the womb to the tomb. A great difference between the womb and the tomb is the w and the t! Wasted time! We waste great and precious time as we journey from the womb to the tomb; in the end, we remember the w and the t in a simple statement of regret, 'had I known' ! The wasted time!"

"Think of your personal and professional life-are you attracting what you want? Are you attracting the kind of people you like? Do you feel that life is working for you or against you? How have others been treating you? Are you pleased with your results?"

"I don't dream. Come to think of it, i haven't had any dreams in a long time."

"The play of a pain is a party."

"Montag shook his head. He looked at a blank wall. The girl's face was there, really quite beautiful in memory: astonishing, in fact. She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of a night when you waken to see the time and see the clock telling you the hour and the minute and the second, with a white silence and a glowing, all certainty and knowing what it had to tell of the night passing swiftly on toward further darknesses, but moving also toward a new sun."

"Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything."

"They didn't speak as the sun slowly sank before them. Why was it most colorful when it was about to vanish for the night? Was it angry at being forced belong the horizon? Or was it a showman, giving a performance before retiring?Why was the most colorful part of people's bodies-the brightness of their blood-hidden beneath the skin, never to be seen unless something went wrong?"
Explore more quotes by A. E. van Vogt

"I figure that that has a ten year cycle. At the end of that ten years, I began to get worried that I would run into what is known as the writer's block, the feeling of not being able to do these things."

"But, somewhere in there, I did have the thought that this really fits in with my thinking about what I wanted to do; with what has to be done by a writer in order to stay alive as a writer."

"It came about as follows: over the years when I was involved in dianetics, I wrote the beginnings of many stories. I would get an idea, and then write the beginning, and then never touch it again."

"I first read science fiction in the old British Chum annual when I was about 12 years old."

"Well, first of all, going off with dianetics was based upon a thought of mine."

"In a sense, there's a great truth to that, but, also I was a great reader."

"Recruiting Station was a story that came as the result of many anxious awakenings during many nights."
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