Brian Aldiss Quotes
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The midwife bustled out to the four in the antechamber and announced that the Almighty (who had recently become a Protestant) had seen fit to bless milady with a son.
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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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However you envisage your role in life, all you can do is perform it as best you can.
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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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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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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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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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Obeying an inalienable law, things grew, growing riotous and strange in their impulse for growth.
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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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If we can see our difficulties, there is a way of resolving them, or the hope of a way.
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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 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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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 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?
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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.