Brian Aldiss Quotes
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That house, whatever it was, was the embodiment of all the coldness in his mind. Harley said to himself: 'Whatever has been done to me, I've been cheated. Someone has robbed me of something so thoroughly I don't even know what it is. It's been a cheat, a cheat.…'
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One of the characteristics of age was that all avenues of talk led backward in time.
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He gets bored with the effort of trying to think, and is unhappy because he knows thinking, or at least 'thinking-to-a-purpose' is on the black list of party activities.
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'They enjoy their show of might,' Adam said. 'These people have to express their unhappiness by using ugly things like guns and ill-fitting uniforms, and the whole conception of the camp.'
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He let out a yell of joy. They danced round the room. Pressure of population was such that reproduction had to be strict, controlled. Childbirth required government permission. For this moment, they had waited four years. Incoherently they cried their delight.
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She had tried to love him.
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It is comparatively easy to become a writer; staying a writer, resisting formulaic work, generating one's own creativity - that's a much tougher matter.
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You are like all cruel men, sentimental; you are like all sentimental men; squeamish.
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As long as the chromosome reproduced itself in sufficient dominance, he was immortal! To him, in an unscientific age, the problem did not present itself quite like that; but he realized that there was a trait to be kept in the family.
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The ability to change should not be despised.
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One afternoon in early January, the weather showed a lack of character. There was no frost nor wind: the trees in the garden did not stir.
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The day of the android has dawned.
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Relax, enjoy yourself. Have another drink. It’s patriotic to overconsume.
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All over the world there must be far-reaching changes in animal behavior and habitat; if only one could have another life in which to chart it all....Ah, well, that’s not a fruitful thing to wish, is it?
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I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity.
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The Badlands were extensive. Ancient bomb craters and soil erosion joined hands here; man’s talent for war, coupled with his inability to manage forested land, had produced thousands of square miles of temperate purgatory, where nothing moved but dust.
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Science fiction is no more written for scientists that ghost stories are written for ghosts.
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Most SF is about madness, or what is currently ruled to be madness; this is part of its attraction - it's always playing with how much the human mind can encompass.
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Insane? To disobey a law of the universe was impossible, not insane.
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Keep violence in the mind where it belongs.
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However you envisage your role in life, all you can do is perform it as best you can.
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You were fool enough to think that one hundred and fifty million years either way made an ounce of difference to the muddle of thoughts in a man’s cerebral vortex.
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The ambition of the original Frank had not died; it had grown subtler. It had become a wish to sample everything. The more bodily habitations there were with which to sample, the more tantalizing the idea seemed: for many experiences, belonging only to one brief era, are never repeated, and may be gone before they are perceived and tasted.
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To be a standard shape is not all in life. To know is also important.