Science Fiction Authors From England

"Time was simple, is simple. We can divide it into simple parts, measure it, arrange dinner by it, drink whisky to its passage. We can mathematically deploy it, use it to express ideas about the observable universe, and yet if asked to explain it in simple language to a child–in simple language which is not deceit, of course–we are powerless. The most it ever seems we know how to do with time is to waste it."

"“Politics,” he spat. “Everyone is always looking for material to use against everybody else.”"

"“Lady,” he said, “some place there’s several freight cars of trouble marked 'Rush', and they’re all headed your way.”"

"Was she a bit mad?" "Mad? Oh, no - unless you would call a failure to grow up a kind of madness - in which case there would be very few sane people."

"I guess——" she said, wistfully—"I guess the only thing that's wrong with children is that they grow up to be people like you."

"I see death as the worm's opportunity. It is defeat. You can dress it as you like, with drama, or glory, or pomposity, and perhaps deceive yourself for the critical moment - but, nevertheless, the same worm comes - it is defeat..."

"On the principle that if you walk briskly with an air of purpose ninety-nine per cent of the people you meet will assume it is a proper purpose, I did just that."

"I suppose we all have a number of carefully furnished, non-communicating rooms in our minds."

"There is a sense of reason's fingernails scrabbling to keep their hold, as one slides towards something which is not accountable; not, by ordinary standards, quite sane..."

"Dying," observed the doctor, "is such a very ordinary thing to do."

"Sooner or later the amateur always overreaches himself."

"It was so absurd to die at sixty, anyway, and, as he saw it, it would be even more wasteful to die at eighty. A scheme of things in which the wisdom acquired in living was simply scrapped in this way was, to say the least, grossly inefficient. What did it mean? That somebody else would have to go through the process of learning all that life had already taken sixty years to teach him; and then be similarly scrapped in the end. No wonder the race was slow in getting anywhere—if, indeed, it were getting anywhere—with this cat-and-mouse, ten-forward-and-nine-back system."

"There is a degree of odds against which a gambler becomes just another mug."

"Practically everyone there had had an air of brooding privately with differing intensity. I knew now what it had reminded me of - the outpatients department of a hospital."

"To sleep in peace, and resume a nightmare when one wakes, is a highly undesirable reversal of the natural order."

"I'd begun to grasp the principle that the less anybody knows, the less any squealer can give away. And it was easy to see that in a place where questioning was liable to assume the aspect of a blood-sport, the less one did know about other people's business, the better."

"Other things than to fight, there is, even for dragons."

"You can half-expect things. Try to face them in advance, case-harden your mind, you think - but when they come, it's always different."

"It's all pretty simple if you don't give a damn who gets hurt in the rush."

"Primitive man would see every one of us as a magician."

"'A species continues to exist by outbreeding the checks that its natural enemies impose on it. That is what gives the illusion of "the balance of nature" belief. Once the natural enemies cease to be a threat its fecundity becomes terrifying. Look what has happened in a generation or two to our own population, largely because a few diseases have been overcome. Find a way of conquering the natural enemies, and the only limiting factor is the food supply.'"

"In the name of Au, and all lesser gods, [Nokiki] cursed the island of Tanakuatua for the ruin of his people. He cursed it from north to south, and from east to west, from the tops of its twin hills to the edge of its low tide. He cursed its soil and its rocks; its hot springs and its cold springs; its fruits and its trees; all that ran or crawled on it; everything that jumped on it, or flew over it; the roots in its soil, the life in its rock-pools. He cursed it by day, and he cursed it by night; in the dry season, and in the rainy season, in storm, and in calm. His audience had never heard so comprehensive a curse, and it frightened them greatly. But Nokiki had not done yet. He appealed above Au to Nakaa himself, Nakaa, the lawgiver, the judge before whom every man and woman must pass as he leaves this world for the land of ghosts. He besought Nakaa to declare the island of Tanakuatua forever tabu to all men; to decree that if men should try to live on it they should sicken and die, and shrivel up so that their dust would blow away on the wind and there would be nothing of them left; and that when the ghosts of such men should come to be judged they might not go on to the Happy Land, but suffer, as all tabu-breakers do, shrieking on the stakes in the Pits for all eternity."

"'Co-operation makes many things possible. Co-operation introduces a factor which is greater than the sum of its parts. [...] Such a tremendous thing - the ability to co-operate... It makes you wonder what we could do if we were really to co-operate.'"

"One man's trash is another's souvenir."

"I felt a poignant memory of those desolate patches of disillusion which are the shocks of growing up. The discovery that one lived in a world which could pay honour where honour was not due, was just such a one. The values were rocked, the dependable was suddenly flimsy, the solid became hollow, gold turned to brass, there was no integrity anywhere . . ."

"I have been astonished before, and doubtless shall be again, how the kindliest and most sympathetic of women can pettify and downgrade the searing anguishes of childhood."

"Intelligent life is the only thing that gives meaning to the universe. It is a holy thing, to be fostered and treasured. Without it nothing begins, nothing ends, there can be nothing through all eternity but the mindless babblings of chaos . . . Therefore, the nurture of all intelligent forms is a sacred duty. Even the merest spark of reason must be fanned in the hope of a flame. Frustrated intelligence must have its bonds broken. Narrow-channelled intelligence must be given the power to widen out. High intelligence must be learned from."

"I don't understand women. Nobody does. Least of all themselves."

"He listened closely, and nodded several times, though not always where a nod seemed appropriate."

"An open mind is a difficult thing to keep."

"'The time has now come for us to cease to behave like a lot of irresponsible children letting off fireworks in a crowded hall.'"

"The thing is to play your own game - not let the other feller force you to what he wants."

"And there was another thing, too. No matter what your business is, some gals ain't got no standard of affection except how much you neglect it for 'em. Seems they just got to back themselves against it—and they got it all nicely fixed so they win both ways. If you don't neglect it, you ain't lovin' them enough; if you do, they reckoned you were that kind of sap, anyway."

""Darling, you're talking as if all normal-length lives were planned. They aren't, you know. People have to learn how to live them—and by the time they find out, they're nearly gone. No time to remedy mistakes."

"If life weren't so short it would be worth people's while to do more to put the world to rights."

"You owe it to your self-respect to spend a lot of money on yourself."

"Pretty girls are lovely as the flowers in May, but there are so many flowers in May."

"'If you want to keep alive in the jungle, you must live as the jungle does. . . .'"

"Life isn't very long. You see that plainly when you begin to look at it from the other end. Not time to do very much."

"'And, after all, what is a planet but an island in space?'"

"She doesn't think about anything—she's sort of programmed, like a computer. There's a conditioned response system. She hears, and then acceptance, rejection, and reaction drums go click-click-click, and the answer comes out sort of codified, just exactly right for people who use the same code." "Isn't that a little intolerant?" Francis had suggested. "After all, aren't we all rather like that if we consider ourselves honestly?" "To some degree," Zephanie admitted. "Only some people seem to be rigged always to play the house—like fruit machines."

"The vitriol throwers and smilers with knives"

"We shan't get homo superior without any birth-pangs."

"Look at us—thousands more of us every day. . . In a century or so, we shall be in the Age of Famines. We shall manage to postpone the worst one way and another, but postponement isn't solution, and when the breakdown comes there'll be something so ghastly that the hydrogen-bomb will seem humane by comparison. I'm not romancing. I'm talking about the inevitable time when, unless we do something to stop it, men will be hunting men through ruins, for food. We're letting it drift towards that, with an evil irresponsibility, because with our ordinary short lives we shan't be here to see it. Does our generation care about the misery it is bequeathing? Not it. 'That's their worry,' we say. 'Damn our children's children; we're all right.' ... [...] Like any other animal that overbreeds we shall starve; we shall starve in our millions, in the blackest of all dark ages."

"The Americans had got into the habit of regarding the moon as a piece of U.S.-bespoken real estate that they would get around to developing when they were ready."

"The frustrations are still buzzing about, and soon they are going to find a new place to swarm."

"Five hundred and eighty-four days is a long time to be stuck on a mudbank."

"I found it difficult to believe that they are real people living real lives. For the first day I was constantly accompanied by the feeling that an unseen director would suddenly call 'Cut', and it would all come to a stop."

"Everybody ought to be able to swim."

"'Cruelty is as old as life itself.'"