Brian Aldiss Quotes
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If more people had put their fellow human beings before abstractions last century, we shouldn’t be where we are now.
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Carnage added to carnage does not equal peace.
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Feedback is a pleasant thing. I get a lot of letters from unexpected people in unexpected places.
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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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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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Relax, enjoy yourself. Have another drink. It’s patriotic to overconsume.
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You are like all cruel men, sentimental; you are like all sentimental men; squeamish.
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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 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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'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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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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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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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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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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The ability to change should not be despised.
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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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Insane? To disobey a law of the universe was impossible, not insane.
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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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However you envisage your role in life, all you can do is perform it as best you can.
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Keep violence in the mind where it belongs.
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The day of the android has dawned.
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Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.
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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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Science fiction is no more written for scientists that ghost stories are written for ghosts.