“I enjoyed the late 1960s as much as anyone, and I regarded much of the political ferment of the time as vital to the survival of our society—the Vietnam war might have gone on for many decades more without it. But the era did have its silly side, and the search for the immediately relevant at the expense of the less immediately practical side was, to me, one of the sillier aspects of it. Throwing most of past human knowledge overboard for the sake of bringing about instant social reform did not strike me as an effective way of achieving anything but ignorance. Evidently it seemed that way to others, too: after a while the traditional sciences and historical subjects returned to the curriculum, Shakespeare and Sophocles were allowed back in also, and not a great deal was heard from the earnest, deadly young decreers of non-negotiable demands who had had such power over academic life for a time. (Although a lot of them grew up and became university professors, and they are behind the modern craze for political correctness that has spread so much terror through our academic institutions.)”
“Stale is stale and borrowed is borrowed, no matter how original your models may have been.”
Robert Silverberg
“Autobiography. Apparently one should not name the names of those one has been to bed with, or give explicit figures on the amount of money one has earned, those being the two data most eagerly sought ...”
Robert Silverberg
“Dinoli had to clawed himself to first rank in public relations by sheer exertion, coupled with judicious backstabbing.”
Robert Silverberg
“His name would fade from the front pages in a few days; he knew too much about communications media to believe that his current notoriety would last.”
Robert Silverberg
“When you poison a man in order to sell him the antidote, you don’t boast about it afterward to the victim!”
Robert Silverberg