Quotes by Frederik Pohl

A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.

I perceived quite early that I was a reader, and most of the people I came into contact with were not. It made a barrier. What they wanted to talk about were things they had eaten, touched, or done. What I wanted to talk about was what I had read.

I was worried about sex, he went on. But you know what, Sulie? Its like being told I cant have any caviar for the next couple years. I dont even like caviar. And when you come right down to it, I dont want sex right now. I supposed you punched that into the computer? Cut down sex drive, increase euphoria? Anyway, it finally penetrated my little brain that I was just making trouble for myself, worrying about whether I could get along without something I really didnt want. Its a reflection of what I think other people think I should want.

I let myself flop - so gently, so slowly - into my one real chair and tried to make myself understand that I was on the doorstep of the universe.

They were two lovely choices. One of them meant giving up every chance of a decent life forever...and the other one scared me out of my mind.

For twenty years and more the whole planet had been bombed, raped, ravaged, and gouged by people whose fury had so exceeded their judgment that the only thing they could think of to do to express their discontent was to kill somebody.

The bump of ego on his skull had swollen large, so he saw the whole world in terms of what it could give him.

The robots came bearing a gift and the name of it was Plenty.Plenty is a habit-forming drug. You do not cut the dosage down. You kick it if you can; you stop the dose entirely. But the convulsions that follow may wreck the body entirely.

The FDA just ordered them off the market. The glaze is supposed to be poison—provided you drink at least forty cups of tea out of one of them every day of your life for twenty years.

People ask me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research.

If you dont care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldnt try to write hard science fiction. You can write like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison as much as you want.