Novelists From England

"I hate dealing with these people. No, I hate dealing with people, but the rich ones are the worst."

"It’s the first rule of any change to a licensing agreement: it’s not for the benefit of the end user, no matter what they say."

"He’s trying to get me to confess some fictional problem to him and I won’t fall for it."

"The simple truth emerges like a bubble of swamp gas and just as foul."

"There may be only a thousand or so people here, but it’s easy enough to make the pressure of conformity irresistible. Hell, sometimes we only need one other person to make us fall into line."

"“Do you agree with her?” His face crumples with concentration. “I don’t know. She says me arriving when I did is a sign. But I decided to come here because of the storm. Does that mean God killed everyone I knew to make me do that?”"

"It’s no easier to climb down than it is to go up. It just torments a different set of muscles."

"Once you let someone into the building it’s harder to keep them out of all the rooms."

"There’s no sound except the wildlife staking out territories and calling for a mate. The sounds are different here than on Earth, but the purpose seems the same. “This is my patch!” they scream. “I want sex! Come and shag me! I’ll give you strong babies.” It’s the same stuff humans say most of the time. We just dress those needs up in fancier linguistic clothes."

"I’m not going to let that stupid, crazy woman convince everyone that doing this to me is God’s work! She’s just bored and if they knew—"

"These are intelligent, rational people and they just absorb all this shit without even thinking about it. Are they so desperate to hold on to something that they’ll ignore the facts? How long can they do that?"

"I think that interpreting events as signs from God is a slippery slope."

"One should never break a sacred law when under the influence of psychoactive substances."

"I think “majority” is one of my least favorite words. It’s so often used to justify bad decisions."

"That was the second major lie I told that week. It gets easier, in some ways; now I lie without expending any effort. But I think each one has its own weight. One alone may barely register, like a grain of sand in the palm of one’s hand. But soon enough there’s more than can be held and they start to slip through our grasp if we’re not careful. I’m always careful."

"Guilt sometimes comes from stupid places."

"Saying it’s a sign from God is an interpretation, not a fact."

"He doesn’t answer. I can’t stand these little silences from him. They’re too loud."

"As a scientist, I know this is madness. But I also know this is an act of faith."

"If there’s anything I’ve learned in the years in this job, it’s that whatever you need is in the data. You just have to know which paths through it to follow and how to eliminate the extraneous without losing patterns."

"I made a mistake when I was young and didn’t know how the world worked and I have paid for it. Many, many times over."

"Don’t believe anything on the news feeds. It’s all just a circus for the masses."

"The data is always there. It’s just a matter of knowing where to look."

"“Do you still shout at people when they talk about their faith?” I shake my head. “I grew out of that. Now I mostly let them damn themselves with their own ignorance.”"

"No. I won’t think about that. I’m not the man the press wants me to be. I am not the victim here."

"I’m still not even sure I believe that now. Sounds like the sort of bullshit my psych supervisor would say."

"The priest didn’t have one of the magic gems stitched into his head though, because he thought that talking to everyone else meant that you never listened to yourself anymore."

"I often expect the worst. This is one of the rare times when I’m hoping for it."

"I know enough to never take journalists at their word."

"She speaks with the authority of the ignorant."

"All too easy to find the needle when you know exactly where to look in the haystack."

"Everybody is on a leash. Some are more obvious than others."

"She looks at me like I’m a car engine that’s been making a strange noise."

"Her voice cracks and I fight the tug of memories trying to pull me back to that place where people thought he was the center of the universe. I feel a flash of hatred toward her for being so broken by the loss of him, for needing him so much when he was just a man who scooped up the human detritus from the edges of society and fooled them into thinking they were part of something special."

"Journos are twisted sods."

"That’s the trouble with these violent mersives: once the limbic system gets involved my higher cognitive functions are screwed."

"Animals don't behave like men. If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality."

"El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."

"Look. Look. That's the place for us. High, lonely hills, where the wind and the sound carry, and the ground's as dry as straw in a barn. That's where we ought to be. That's where we have to get to."

"I dislike the whole business of experiments on animals, unless there's some very good and altogether exceptional reason in a particular case. The thing that gets me is that it's not possible for the animals to understand why they're being called upon to suffer. They don't suffer for their own good or benefit at all, and I often wonder how far it's for anyone's. They're given no choice, and there's no central authority responsible for deciding whether what's done in this case or that is morally justifiable. These experimental animals are just sentient objects; they're useful because they're able to react; sometimes precisely because they're able to feel fear and pain. And they're used as if they were electric light bulbs or boots. What it comes to is that whereas there used to be human and animal slaves, now there are just animal slaves. They have no legal rights, and no choice in the matter."

"Like the pain of a bad wound, the effect of a deep shock takes some while to be felt. When a child is told, for the first time in his life, that a person he has known is dead, although he does not disbelieve it, he may well fail to comprehend it and later ask--perhaps more than once--where the dead person is and when he is coming back."

"When the man was disgraced and told to go away, he was allowed to ask all the animals whether any of them would come with him and share his fortunes and his life. There were only two who agreed to come entirely of their own accord, and they were the dog and the cat. And ever since then, those two have been jealous of each other, and each is for ever trying to make man choose which one he likes best. Every man prefers one or the other."

"When Marco Polo came at last to Cathay, seven hundred years ago, did he not feel--and did his heart not falter as he realized--that this great and splendid capital of an empire had had its being all the years of his life and far longer, and that he had been ignorant of it? That it was in need of nothing from him, from Venice, from Europe? That it was full of wonders beyond his understanding? That his arrival was a matter of no importance whatever? We know that he felt these things, and so has many a traveler in foreign parts who did not know what he was going to find. There is nothing that cuts you down to size like coming to some strange and marvelous place where no one even stops to notice that you stare about you."

"To come to the end of a time of anxiety and fear! To feel the cloud that hung over us lift and disperse—the cloud that dulled the heart and made happiness no more than a memory! This at least is one joy that must have been known by almost every living creature."

"The full moon, well risen in a cloudless eastern sky, covered the high solitude with its light. We are not conscious of daylight as that which displaces darkness. Daylight, even when the sun is clear of clouds, seems to us simply the natural condition of the earth and air. When we think of the downs, we think of the downs in daylight, as we think of a rabbit with its fur on. Stubbs may have envisaged the skeleton inside the horse, but most of us do not: and we do not usually envisage the downs without daylight, even though the light is not a part of the down itself as the hide is part of the horse itself. We take daylight for granted. But moonlight is another matter. It is inconstant. The full moon wanes and returns again. Clouds may obscure it to an extent to which they cannot obscure daylight.Water is necessary to us, but a waterfall is not. Where it is to be found it is something extra, a beautiful ornament. We need daylight and to that extent it is utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need. When it comes, it serves no necessity. It transforms. It falls upon the banks and the grass, separating one long blade from another; turning a drift of brown, frosted leaves from a single heap to innumerable flashing fragments; or glimmering lengthways along wet twigs as though light itself were ductile. Its long beams pour, white and sharp, between the trunks of trees, their clarity fading as they recede into the powdery, misty distance of beech woods at night. In moonlight, two acres of coarse bent grass, undulant and ankle deep, tumbled and rough as a horse's mane, appear like a bay of waves, all shadowy troughs and hollows. The growth is so thick and matted that event the wind does not move it, but it is the moonlight that seems to confer stillness upon it.We do not take moonlight for granted. It is like snow, or like the dew on a July morning. It does not reveal but changes what it covers. And its low intensity---so much lower than that of daylight---makes us conscious that it is something added to the down, to give it, for only a little time, a singular and marvelous quality that we should admire while we can, for soon it will be gone again."

"There's terrible evil in the world. It comes from men. All other elil do what they have to do and Frith moves them as he moves us. They live on the earth and they need food. Men will never rest till they've spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals."

"Rabbits (says Mr. Lockley) are like human beings in many ways. One of these is certainly their staunch ability to withstand disaster and to let the stream of their life carry them along, past reaches of terror and loss. They have a certain quality which it would not be accurate to describe as callousness or indifference. It is, rather, a blessedly circumscribed imagination and an intuitive feeling that Life is Now. A foraging wild creature, intent above all upon survival, is as strong as the grass."

"When several creatures, men or animals, have worked together to overcome something offering resistance and have at last succeeded, there follows often a pause, as though they felt the propriety of paying respect to the adversary who has put up so good a fight. The great tree falls, splitting, cracking, rushing down in leaves to the final, shuddering blow along the ground. Then the foresters are silent, and do not at once sit down. After hours, the deep snowdrift has been cleared and the lorry is ready to take the men home out of the cold. But they stand a while, leaning on their spades and only nodding unsmilingly as the car-drivers go through, waving their thanks."

"You know how you let yourself think that everything will be all right if you can only get to a certain place or do a certain thing. But when you get there you find it's not that simple."

"Here is a boy who was waiting to be punished. But then, unexpectedly, he finds that his fault has been overlooked or forgiven and at once the world reappears in brilliant colors, full of delightful prospects. Here is a soldier who was waiting, with a heavy heart, to suffer and die in battle. But suddenly the luck has changed. There is news! The war is over and everyone bursts out singing! He will go home after all! The sparrows in the plowland were crouching in terror of the kestrel. But she has gone; and they fly pell-mell up the hedgerow, frisking, chattering and perching where they will."