Brian Aldiss Quotes
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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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However you envisage your role in life, all you can do is perform it as best you can.
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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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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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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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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’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?