Taha

“Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.

Everything passes.

That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.

Everything passes.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“I sat down and started the book. But, you might point out that I didn’t yet have the novel. All I had was the social framework, a problem, a solution, a character and a beginning. When do I make up all the details that go into the characteristically involved plot of one of my novels (and Nemesis is quite involved). I’m afraid that I make that up as I go along, but not without thought. Having worked out the first scene, I find that by the time I’ve finished that, I have the second scene in mind, at the conclusion of which I have the third scene, and so on all the way through to the ninety-fifth scene or so, which ends the novel.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“Someone once asked Isaac Newton how he managed to reach solutions to problems that others found impenetrable. He answered, “By thinking and thinking and thinking about it.” I don’t know what other answer people can possibly expect. There is the romantic notion that there is such a thing as “inspiration,” that a heavenly Muse comes down and plunks her harp over your head and, presto, the job is done. Like all romantic notions, however, this is just a romantic notion. Some people may be better at solving problems and getting ideas than others are; they may have a livelier imagination, a more efficient way of grasping at distant consequences; but it all comes down to thinking in the end. What counts is how well you can think, and even more, how long and persistently you can think without breaking down. There are brilliant people, I imagine, who produce little, if anything, because their attention span to their own thoughts is so short; and there are less brilliant people who can plug away at their thoughts until they wrench something out of them. All this comes up in my mind now because a friend of mine, a science fiction writer whose work I admire enormously, in the course of a conversation asked, in a very embarrassed manner, “How do you get your ideas?” I could see what the problem was. He had been having a little trouble coming up with something and he thought that perhaps he had lost the knack of getting ideas, or had never really had it, and he turned to me. After all, I write so much that I must have no trouble getting ideas and I might even have some special system that others could use, too. But I answered, very earnestly, “How do I get my ideas? By thinking and thinking and thinking till I’m ready to jump out the window.” “You, too?” he said, quite obviously relieved. “Of course,” I said. “If you’re having trouble, all it means is that you’re one of us. After all, if getting ideas were easy, everyone in the world would be writing.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

“Campbell urged me to make my ideas as to the robot safeguards explicit rather than implicit, and I did this in my fourth robot story, “Runaround,” which appeared in the March 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. In that issue, on page 100, in the first column, about one-third of the way down (I just happen to remember) one of my characters says to another, “Now, look, let’s start with the Three Fundamental Rules of Robotics.” This, as it turned out, was the very first known use of the word “robotics” in print, a word that is the now-accepted and widely used term for the science and technology of the construction, maintenance, and use of robots. The Oxford English Dictionary, in the 3rd Supplementary Volume, gives me credit for the invention of the word. I did not know I was inventing the word, of course. In my youthful innocence, I thought that was the word and hadn’t the faintest notion it had never been used before.”
― Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection