
“Always remember the last words of my grandfather, who said: "A truck!"”
E=MO² (1985)
Afterwords on the Life of Kings, p. 438
The Boys Of Summer
“Always remember the last words of my grandfather, who said: "A truck!"”
E=MO² (1985)
“Hopefully, I’ll be remembered as the person who brought an end to Christianity.”
As quoted in Spin (August 1996), p. 34.
1990s
Variant: “You remember winning, don’t you? A battle won, somewhere?”
“No,” said the old man, deep under. “I don’t remember anyone winning anywhere any time. War’s never a winning thing, Charlie. You just lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for terms. All I remember is a lot of losing and sadness and nothing good but the end of it. The end of it, Charles, that was a winning all to itself, having nothing to do with guns.
Source: Dandelion Wine (1957), p. 85
"Introduction" to The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973)<!-- , p. ix -->
The Last Question (1956)
Context: "The Last Question" is my personal favorite, the one story I made sure would not be omitted from this collection. Why is it my favorite? For one thing I got the idea all at once and didn't have to fiddle with it; and I wrote it in white-heat and scarcely had to change a word. This sort of thing endears any story to any writer.
Then, too, it has had the strangest effect on my readers. Frequently someone writes to ask me if I can give them the name of a story, which they think I may have written, and tell them where to find it. They don't remember the title but when they describe the story it is invariably "The Last Question". This has reached the point where I recently received a long-distance phone call from a desperate man who began, "Dr. Asimov, there's a story I think you wrote, whose title I can't remember—" at which point I interrupted to tell him it was "The Last Question" and when I described the plot it proved to be indeed the story he was after. I left him convinced I could read minds at a distance of a thousand miles.
No other story I have written has anything like this effect on my readers — producing at once an unshakeable memory of the plot and an unshakeable forgettery of the title and even author. I think it may be that the story fills them so frighteningly full, that they can retain none of the side-issues.
“Remember me and smile, for it's better to forget than to remember me and cry.”
In 'Art News', April 1965, p. 63; as quoted in in The Paintings of Joan Mitchel, ed. Jane Livingstone, Joan Mitchell, Linda Nochlin, p. 26
1950 - 1975
“It's all right for women to cry, as it is for men to remember.”