If I could go back in time and tell my younger self that eventually that I'd become very successful writing Dune books after Frank Herbert's death, I would have laughed myself silly, I think, at how strange that prospect would be.

My mother speaks of my step being a source of life-long pain to her, that it is a living death, etc. By the same post I had several letters from anxious relatives, telling me that it was my duty to come home and thus ease my mother's anxiety.

Washington, not Jefferson, freed his slaves upon his death.

Death is a very important part of life.

God grants an easy death only to the just.

When I see someone who is starved, they don't look alert. They don't have boundless energy. If you're too skinny, it looks like you're near death.

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom.

I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens.

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down .

Marriage is the death of hope.

It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.

Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you're free to live. You no longer care about your reputation. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically to promote a cause you believe in.

All has been looted, betrayed, sold; black death's wing flashed ahead.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, Who suffered death because she chose to turn.