Brian Aldiss Quotes
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If we can see our difficulties, there is a way of resolving them, or the hope of a way.
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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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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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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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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 day of the android has dawned.
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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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Poor little warrior, science will never invent anything to assist the titanic death you want in the contra-terrene caverns of your fee-fi-fo-fumblingly fearful id!
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'There's a way outside. We're - we've got to find out what we are.' His voice rose to an hysterical pitch. He was shaking Calvin again. 'We must find out what's wrong here. Either we are victims of some ghastly experiment - or we're all monsters!'
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The thing was not discussable, even with a near acquaintance like Calvin because … because of the nature of the thing … because one had to behave like a normal, unworried human being. That at least was sound and clear and gave him comfort: behave like a normal human being.
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Obeying an inalienable law, things grew, growing riotous and strange in their impulse for growth.
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To be a standard shape is not all in life. To know is also important.
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I'm lucky that SFWA has such a short memory. I was always the Young Turk, the gadfly. Part of the New Wave, although I didn't fit in there either! I spent years, and two histories, putting the so-called Old Guard in their place, and now I'm one of them!
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The shuffle only demonstrated people’s fatuous belief in a political cure for a human condition.
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Most of my poetry lies beyond the SF field, yet here I am corralled into 'SF poetry' as part of this poetry weekend. Of course, some might say, 'you've made your own bed - now you must lie in it!' But, while fully accepting that dictum, I'm not yet quite prepared to lie down...
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It’s a national failing to think of politics as something that goes on in Parliament. It isn’t; it’s something that goes on inside us.
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It was extraordinary to be in two places at once, doing two different things - extraordinary, but not confusing. He merely had two bodies which were as integrated as his two hands had been.
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Why don’t you go somewhere quietly and consult your history books if you have no consciences to consult?