Brian Aldiss > Quotes

“When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults.”
― Brian Aldiss

“It is at night... that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull.”
― Brian Aldiss

“The misfortune of a young man who returns to his native land after years away is that he finds his native land foreign; whereas the lands he left behind remain for ever like a mirage in his mind.
However, misfortune can itself sow seeds of creativity.

---- Afterword to "Hothouse" Brian Aldiss”
― Brian Aldiss, Hothouse

“There are two kinds of writer: those that make you think, and those that make you wonder.”
― Brian Aldiss

“Science fiction is for real, space opera is for fun.”
― Brian Aldiss

“Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts.”
― Brian Aldiss

“This shall be home, where danger was my cradle, and all we have learned will guard us!”
― Brian Aldiss, The Long Afternoon of Earth

“To qualify as a Seeker, it was necessary to show a high serendipity factor. In my experimental behaviour pool as a child, I had exhibited such a factor, and had been selected for special training forthwith. I had taken additional courses in Philosophical, Alpha-humerals, Incidental Tetrachotomy, Apunctual Synchronicity, Homoontogenesis, and other subjects, ultimately qualifying as a Prime Esemplastic Seeker. In other words, I put two and two together in situations where other people were not thinking about addition. I connected. I made wholes greater than parts. Mine was an invaluable profession in a cosmos increasingly full of parts.”
― Brian Aldiss, The 1977 Annual World's Best SF

“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.”
― Brian Aldiss

“Civilisation is the distance that man has placed between himself and his own excreta.”
― Brian Aldiss, The Dark Light Years

“Whatever terrific events may inform our lives, it always comes to that in the end; we just want to lie down.”
― Brian Aldiss, An Island Called Moreau