Alien Quotes

“I’m not afraid of the dark I know. It’s the dark I don’t that terrifies me.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“A man with a gun may hunt a tiger during the day with some expectation of success. Turn out his light, put the man in the jungle at night, surround him with the unknown and all his primitive fears return. Advantage to the tiger.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“He did not put his feelings down to simple xenophobia. Basically, he hadn’t expected the alien to be so completely alien.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“Jones the cat was sitting in front of a port. He found the storm exhilarating and had evolved a frenetic game of swatting at the larger particles of dust whenever one struck the port’s exterior. Jones knew he could never actually catch one of the flying motes. He understood the underlying physical laws behind the fact of a solid transparency. That lessened the delight of the game but did not obviate it. Besides, he could pretend that the dark fragments of stone were birds, though he’d never seen a bird. But he instinctively understood that concept, too.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“Curiosity, after all, was what had driven mankind out from his isolated, unimportant world and across the gulf between the stars. It had also, he thoughtfully reminded himself, killed the figurative cat.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“Rule makers always draw up their precious rules and regulations in safety and comfort, not out in the field, where those same absolutes are supposed to be applied. At those times we have to rely on our own minds and feelings.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“Naturally, there was nothing to say. Kane was dead. He’d been alive, now he was not alive. None of the crew were particularly strong with words.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“Parker sat still, letting the last vestiges of the memory fade from his mind. They left a pleasantly lascivious residue behind. Absently, he flipped a key switch over his console. A gratifyingly green light appeared above it, held steady.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“You know what I’m talking about. Mother was monitoring his body. You were monitoring Mother.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“Why did you let the alien survive inside Kane?’ The science officer scowled. ‘I’m not sure you’re getting through to me. Nobody “let” anything survive inside anybody. It just happened.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“I’m not afraid of the dark I know. It’s the dark I don’t that terrifies me. Especially when it’s filled with noises like that distress call.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“No, but your idea of what betters human life might differ from someone else’s.’ For”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“If you know less than everything, you always feel inadequate.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“Remember that the prime consideration of science is the protection and betterment of human life. I would never contravene that.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“The trouble with computers, she thought, was that they had no intuitive senses. Only deductive ones. You had to ask the right question.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“Read you,’ replied Dallas. Thinking of mine shafts, he asked, ‘Any change in your surroundings? Still the same stuff walling the shaft?’ ‘Far as I can see. How am I doing on line?’ A brief pause while Dallas checked the cable remaining on the spool. ‘Fine. Got over fifty metres left. If the shaft runs deeper than that we’ll have to call this off until we can bring bigger stuff from the ship. I wouldn’t think it’d go that far down, though.’ ‘What makes you think so?’ Dallas sounded thoughtful. ‘Would make the ship all out of proportion.’ ‘Proportion to what? And to whose ideas of proportion?’ Dallas did not have a reply for that.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“It was exciting and intellectually gratifying to speculate on what might lie waiting in the black gulfs when one was behind the business end of a telescope, quite another to do so isolated on an unpleasant little speck of a world such as this, confronted by a ship of non-human manufacture that uncomfortably resembled a growth instead of a familiar device for manipulating and overcoming the neat laws of physics.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“That’s not what’s bothering you, is it? You’re worried about what they might find. Or have we all misjudged you and you’re really a high-minded seeker after knowledge, a true devotee of pushing back the frontiers of the known universe?’ ‘Hell, no.’ Parker didn’t seem the least offended by Ripley’s casual sarcasm. ‘I’m a true devotee of pushing back the frontiers of my bank account.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“Just the basalt surface, plenty of cold, hard lava. And cold air, well below the line,’ Ash informed them. ‘We’d need suits to handle the temperature even if the air were breathable. If there’s anything alive out there, it’s tough.’ Dallas looked resigned. ‘I suppose it was unreasonable to expect anything else. Hope springs eternal. There’s just enough of an atmosphere to make vision bad. I’d have preferred no air at all, but we didn’t design this rock.’ ‘You never know.’ Kane was being philosophical again. ‘Might be something else’s idea of paradise.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“This is the deep-space commercial tug Nostromo, registration number one eight zero, two four six, en route to Earth with bulk cargo crude petroleum and appropriate refinery. Calling Antarctica traffic control. Do you read me? Over.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“In loquaciousness lay insanity.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“She tried to scream and couldn’t. It died in her throat.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“Ripley touched a wall accidentally, pulled her hand away in disgust. It was coated with a thick, viscous slime. Old lubricants, she mused. A liner would’ve been shut down if an inspector had discovered such conditions on it. But nobody fooled with such leaks on a ship like the Nostromo. The lubricants couldn’t bother anyone important. What was a little rarely encountered mess to a tug crew?”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“recalcitrant”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“egress.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“amorphous”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“deliquesce.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“excrescence…”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“She pitied anything that might have lived here. Despite”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“basalt”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien