“Science fiction rarely is about scientists doing real science, in its slowness, its vagueness, the sort of tedious quality of getting out there and digging amongst rocks and then trying to convince people that what you're seeing justifies the conclusions you're making.”

“When people see you're happy doing what you're doing, it sort of takes the power away from them to tease you about it.”

“If you're going to make a science fiction movie, then have a hover craft chase, for God's sake.”

“Many scientists deeply involved in the exploration of the solar system (myself among them) were first turned in that direction by science fiction. And the fact that some of that science fiction was not of the highest quality is irrelevant. Ten-year-olds do not read the scientific literature.”

“I am trying to convince people--not only the public, but lawmakers and people in power--that investing in the frontier of science, however remote it may seem in its relevance to what you're doing today, is a way of stockpiling the seed corns of future harvests of this nation… Advancing a frontier--history has shown--has advanced a culture ever since the industrial revolution got underway.”

“I'm personally convinced that computer science has a lot in common with physics. Both are about how the world works at a rather fundamental level. The difference, of course, is that while in physics you're supposed to figure out how the world is made up, in computer science you create the world. Within the confines of the computer, you're the creator. You get to ultimately control everything that happens. If you're good enough, you can be God. On a small scale.”

“General fiction is pretty much about ways that people get into problems and screw their lives up. Science fiction is about everything else.”

“Bob Dylan: The media is all-pervasive. What can a writer think of to write that you don't see every day in a newspaper or on television?
Interviewer: …Do you think that TV and the media have killed poetry and literature?
Bob Dylan: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. … What's a writer to do if every idea is exposed in the media before he can get to it or let it evolve? What's a writer gonna write about? … We're living in a science-fiction world. We're living in a world that Disney has conquered. Disney's science fiction. Theme parks, trendy streets, it's all science fiction. So I would say, if a writer has got something to say, he'll have to do it in that–
Interviewer: Outside of the real world?
Bob Dylan: There is a real world. Science fiction has become the real world. Whether we realize it or not, it has.”

“It has been asserted - and this is no overstatement - that whereas other sciences draw their conclusions from what we know, the science of probability derives its most important results from what we do not know.”

“You need to read more science fiction. Nobody who reads science fiction comes out with this crap about the end of history”