Quotes by Robert Silverberg

“My temperament is not inclined toward more self-promotion than is absolutely necessary for my professional well-being.”

“Ive been in the midst of the SF scene for more than 50 years. And I think I owe it to historians of the field to set down, piecemeal though it may be, my recollections of the era through which Ive passed.”

“I thought theyd cast some interesting light on the beginning of my career, especially with the introductions I wrote for them. It was a real nostalgia trip, all right. As for picking the stories, I chose the ones that seemed still to stand up for modern readers, so long as they didnt expect state-of-the-art 21st-century narrative.”

Why should love require a contract? Why put yourself into the clutches of the state and give it power over you? Why invite lawyers to fuck around with your assets? Marriage is for the immature and the insecure and the ignorant. We who see through such institutions should be content to live together without legal coercion.

I dont understand why anybody old enough to know the score ever gets married, anyway. Why should love require a contract? Why put yourself into the clutches of the state and give it power over you? Why invite lawyers to fuck around with your assets? Marriage is for the immature and the insecure and the ignorant. We who see through such institutions should be content to live together without legal coercion

The main thing about aliens is that they are alien. They feel no responsibility for fulfilling any of your expectations. (Dark City Lights)

Meanwhile here I am- Earthborn woman, a mere barbaric maula, geting deeper into Imperial Space with each passing light second. I should be trembling with fear, I suppouse. No. Let the Emperor tremble. Laylah is here!

I tried to be good to Judith, I tried to be kind and loving, but our hatred kept coming between us.

[He] had riposted with the proper metaphysical statements, yet he was disturbed.

It was like that all the time, in those years: an endless trip, a gaudy voyage. But powers decay. Time leaches the colors from the best of visions. The world becomes grayer. Entropy beats us down. Everything fades. Everything goes. Everything dies.

There are our ghosts, Smithers said.It was a word he liked to use, said Brewster. Like most of us Brewster had read a few ghost stories, and to him the word ghosts summoned up the creaking floorboards of a haunted house, shrouded white figures gliding silently through darkness, fluttering robes moving of their own bodiless accord, strangely transparent coaches travelling swiftly down a midnight road, and other such images quite remote from the chanting and drumming of desert folk in gaudy garb, with jingling anklets and necklaces, under a hot fierce sun. But the sounds of the Thar came from some invisible source, and to Smithers they were sounds made by ghosts.(Smithers And The Ghosts Of The Thar)

Im an urban New Yorker to the last molecule.

He met me at the airport; it was ten in the morning, Washington time, when I arrived, after having taken a plane that left Los Angeles International at 10:10 A.M. Los Angeles time. Who says time-reversal is hard to accomplish?

To enter the past is like poking a baseball bat into a spiderweb: it cant be done subtly or delicately.