Brian Aldiss Quotes
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Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.
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There have been mechanicals on the market with mini-computers for brains - plastic things without life, super-toys - but we have at last found a way to link computer circuitry with synthetic flesh.
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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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Irreconcilables: he should stay here and conform; he should - not stay here (remembering no time when he was not here, Harley could frame the second idea no more clearly than that). Another point of pain was that 'here' and 'not here' seemed to be not two halves of a homogeneous whole, but two dissonances.
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Science fiction is no more written for scientists that ghost stories are written for ghosts.
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You are like all cruel men, sentimental; you are like all sentimental men; squeamish.
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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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'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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At least the mentor’s point was made: loneliness was psychological, not statistical.
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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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'Are you a religious man, Joe?'Flitch pulled a face. 'I leaves that sort of thing to women.'
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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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Keep violence in the mind where it belongs.
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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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Relax, enjoy yourself. Have another drink. It’s patriotic to overconsume.
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Insane? To disobey a law of the universe was impossible, not insane.
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Frank's chromosome was now breeding as true as ever. Blood group, creed, colour of skin - nothing was proof against it. The numbers with shared consciousness, procreating for all they were worth, trebled every generation.
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The ability to change should not be despised.
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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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Many Franks of the sixteenth generation were killed in the muck of the trenches, he died not once but many times, developing an obsessive dread of war which never left him. By the time the Americans entered the war, he was turning his many thoughts to politics.
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There was a time, two or three centuries ago, when it looked as if the intellect might win over the body, and our species become something worthwhile. But too much procreation killed that illusion.
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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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All the time, he hoped they would understand that his arrogance masked only shyness-or did he hope that it was his shyness which masked arrogance? He did not know.Who could presume to know? The one quality holds much of the other. Both refuse to come forward and share.
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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.