Brian Aldiss Quotes
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I have had wealth, rank and power, but, if these were all I had, how wretched I should be.
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Man was an accident on this world or it would have been made better for him!
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Fantasy is literature for teenagers.
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What were several fewer species of animals compared with a hundred-mile advance and another medal on another general?
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A writer should say to himself, not, How can I get more money?, but How can I reach more readers (without lowering standards)?
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I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity.
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I was hardly fit for human society. Thus destiny shaped me to be a science fiction writer.
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When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults.
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That's the artist's role - to strike out always for something new, to break away, to defy, to... grapple with the unfamiliar.
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However you envisage your role in life, all you can do is perform it as best you can.
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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.
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Its at night, when perhaps we should be dreaming, that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull. I dont know if anyone has ever pointed out that great attraction of insomnia before, but it is so; the night seems to release a little more of our vast backward inheritance of instincts and feelings; as with the dawn, a little honey is allowed to ooze between the lips of the sandwich, a little of the stuff of dreams to drip into the waking mind.
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Feedback is a pleasant thing. I get a lot of letters from unexpected people in unexpected places.
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If more people had put their fellow human beings before abstractions last century, we shouldn't be where we are now.
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Keep violence in the mind Where it belongs (Barefoot in the Head)
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Obeying an inalienable law, things grew, growing riotous and strange in their impulse for growth.
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There are two kinds of writer: those that make you think, and those that make you wonder.
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My briefest ever definition of science fiction is 'Hubris clobbered by Nemesis.'
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Most of my poetry lies beyond the SF field, yet here I am corralled into 'SF poetry' as part of this poetry weekend. Of course, some might say, 'you've made your own bed - now you must lie in it!' But, while fully accepting that dictum, I'm not yet quite prepared to lie down.
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Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.
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Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.
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Science fiction is for real, space opera is for fun.
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I've no objection to morality, except that it's obsolete.
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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
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Most SF is about madness, or what is currently ruled to be madness; this is part of its attraction - it's always playing with how much the human mind can encompass.
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It is comparatively easy to become a writer; staying a writer, resisting formulaic work, generating ones own creativity - thats a much tougher matter.
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Let's have a toast - to the future generation of consumers, however many heads or assholes they have!
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To be a standard shape is not all in life. To know is also important.
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When you are young, you enjoy a sustained illusion that sooner or later something marvelous is going to happen, that you are going to transcend your parents' limitations.
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Why had I become a writer in the first place? Because I wasn't fit for society; I didn't fit into the system.
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