Steve Aylett > Quotes

“The optimist sees the future as a rabbit sees the oncoming truck - getting bigger, not closer.”
― Steve Aylett

“In America, fundamentalist Christians believe the world was created 6,000 years ago - in England people drink in bars that are older than that.”
― Steve Aylett

“Since childhood I’d been suspected of imagination”
― Steve Aylett

“Sanity’s a virginity of the mind
”
― Steve Aylett, Atom

“A hundred percent of marriages end in divorce, disappearance or death.”
― Steve Aylett, Toxicology

“Hang up the phone on a vampire, the definition of carefree.”
― Steve Aylett

“Let us forget the past - this is the only way to be genuinely surprised.”
― Steve Aylett, Slaughtermatic

“Biting enemies seems to be acceptable in a surprisingly narrow range of circumstances, or so a ninja shouted at me once”
― Steve Aylett

“Crime is one of the many methods justice may select.”
― Steve Aylett, Slaughtermatic

“How many times does a man have to shave before his chin gets the message?
”
― Steve Aylett, Slaughtermatic

“Dreams always end before you kill the last person.”
― Steve Aylett, The Crime Studio

“Most books are so well written they barely have any effect on the reader’s senses”
― Steve Aylett, Toxicology

“What happens when the hitcher and the driver are equally murderous?
”
― Steve Aylett

“We have truth in order not to die of art.
”
― Steve Aylett

“What’s life in this nation? Collect emptiness in a household of cornflakes. Transient fuel gobbles attention, the television aches, the truth walks. Scheme worms welcome your corpse, trap clicks and you’re in heaven, bored rigid
”
― Steve Aylett

“a story is ready when it falls from your face”
― Steve Aylett

“Scientists used to do an experiment whereby a dog’s repeated reward for performing a task was unaccountably replaced by punishment. The dog, knowing it would be penalized for doing well or doing badly, would become melancholic and inactive. This and other unforeseeable results were funded by taxing up to sixty percent of people’s earnings. People became strangely melancholic and inactive
”
― Steve Aylett

“One thing you’ll say for skeletons, they’ll always give you a smile.”
― Steve Aylett, Slaughtermatic

“Nothing like a spider in the mouth to get you thinking.
”
― Steve Aylett, The Inflatable Volunteer

“Fractal litigation, whereby the flapping of a butterfly’s wings on one side of the world resulted in a massive compensation claim on the other.”
― Steve Aylett, Slaughtermatic

“Oppression evolves, like everything else.”
― Steve Aylett, Toxicology

“Gun stripping is the tea ceremony of America.”
― Steve Aylett, Toxicology

“A key and a strangler - this is all a simple tale requires.”
― Steve Aylett, The Inflatable Volunteer

“I knew books could see people around them, they ground their tiny teeth, tried to rattle like windows, stories to tell.”
― Steve Aylett, Shamanspace

“Seemed she should learn to smile when she was unhappy, to stop laughing, to speak up, to never speak to strangers, to share guilt for the acts of strangers, that strangers made the laws of the land, that the laws of the land valued things over life, that life ended if a stranger decided it, to be where she could be found, to feel one thing and do another. How could she hang so many contradictions in one skull”
― Steve Aylett

“Painkillers are the drugs of the future”
― Steve Aylett, Slaughtermatic

“A sniper is like a genius - it’s not enough to be one, you have to be one at something.”
― Steve Aylett, Slaughtermatic

“No matter how good the idea, there’s always an advocate extreme enough to deter people.”
― Steve Aylett

“The best way of getting into something is to think of it as mischief.”
― Steve Aylett, The Crime Studio

“The great thing about being ignored is that you can speak the truth with impunity.”
― Steve Aylett, Toxicology

“He said he didn’t like my kind and I was filled with the delirious expectation that he would identify me as a common species - that there were others like myself. I controlled my excitement, but he seemed to sense it - his gaze wavered uncertainly.”
― Steve Aylett, The Crime Studio

“Parker always felt things in his bones because, he said, it saved space”
― Steve Aylett

“Used a replica gun to steal a replica sportscar and experienced a replica of remorse”
― Steve Aylett

“Stab me if you can enjoy it - but not if it feels like a duty. Stab me vertically if I’m lying down and horizontally if I’m running”
― Steve Aylett

“One golfer a year is hit by lightning. This may be the only evidence we have of god’s existence.”
― Steve Aylett, Atom

“The most amusing thing about a pantomime horse is the necessity of having to shoot it twice.”
― Steve Aylett, Bigot Hall

“It’s hard for people to stampede when they’re strutting”
― Steve Aylett, Shamanspace

“In books there’s nothing of the fish covered in the coldness of the sea, or the feeling of a star touching space. Bad for business.”
― Steve Aylett, The Inflatable Volunteer

“Any act worth a damn can not be ignored and when an effective person is ignored it’s the result of a deliberate series of steps on his or her part.”
― Steve Aylett, Slaughtermatic

“There’s no such thing as a normal angel. It’s never done that way.”
― Steve Aylett, Atom

“A society will manufacture an image of progress and locate it in the direction it wishes to take us.”
― Steve Aylett, Shamanspace

“Murder’s the taking of one man’s life by another - war’s the other way around.”
― Steve Aylett, Slaughtermatic

“Originality irritates so obscurely that people may have to evolve to scratch it.”
― Steve Aylett, Shamanspace

“The law is where reality goes to die.”
― Steve Aylett, The Crime Studio

“What’s that thing when someone gets a knock on the head and suddenly can’t remember anything about himself?’
Death,’ said the barman, his face a mask of disapproval.”
― Steve Aylett, The Crime Studio

“The clerk tripped on the carpet, hit a window and went through, carrying with him a vase which had been on the sill. His skull broke like the vase and the vase broke like his skull, and both burst forth water mainly, and from the vase some flowers. If I could choose a death I’d make it something like that, except I’d add a good woman and some lard.”
― Steve Aylett, The Inflatable Volunteer

“I owed no morality to those who would extort it by force”
― Steve Aylett, Slaughtermatic

“Ideas are self-replenishing, like snot”
― Steve Aylett, The Crime Studio

“...carved dolls stick to the rules.”
― Steve Aylett

“I crept in to find my father with pennies on his eyes - and looking closer I saw they were made of foil-covered chocolate. Of course I stole and ate them. Magical guilt? Tell me about it”
― Steve Aylett