The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed and the truly new is criticized with aversion.

The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.

Some of the most amazing human beings on the face of the planet go to sci-fi conventions although I'm sure a few of them wouldn't admit it.

I have two ideas for novels at the moment neither of them all that conventional but I'm not ready to choose between them yet let alone settle down to the process of writing.

Had the United States and the United Kingdom gone on alone to capture Baghdad under the provisions of the Geneva and Hague conventions we would have been considered occupying powers and therefore would have been responsible for all the costs of maintaining or restoring government education and other services for the people of Iraq.

Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.

This is the first convention of the space age - where a candidate can promise the moon and mean it.