Brian Aldiss famous quotes

Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Creativity #Problem #Solution To A Problem

There are two kinds of writer: those that make you think, and those that make you wonder.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Writing #Thinking #Two

When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them, they show us the state of our decay.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Children #Names #Childhood

Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Science #Ghost Stories #Fiction

When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Life #Kids #Childhood

I can't help believing that these things that come from the subconscious mind have a sort of truth to them. It may not be a scientific truth, but it's psychological truth.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Believe #Mind #May

Fantasy is literature for teenagers.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Teenager #Literature #Fantasy

Keep violence in the mind Where it belongs (Barefoot in the Head)
-- Brian Aldiss

#Mind #Violence #Barefoot

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.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Night #Skulls #Mind

That's the artist's role - to strike out always for something new, to break away, to defy, to... grapple with the unfamiliar.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Artist #Roles #Break

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.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Mind #Madness #Humans

I was hardly fit for human society. Thus destiny shaped me to be a science fiction writer.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Destiny #Fiction #Fit

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...
-- Brian Aldiss

#Lying #Weekend #Bed

Obeying an inalienable law, things grew, growing riotous and strange in their impulse for growth.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Law #Growth #Growing

To be a standard shape is not all in life. To know is also important.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Important #Shapes #Standards

Man was an accident on this world or it would have been made better for him!
-- Brian Aldiss

#Men #World #Made

We belong to an age where apocalypse is our daily bread, coffee's black, and we know we're part of the abyss. Red Spider White Web is right on target in conveying that understanding. It splinters in the mind... the underworld of the century's imaginings.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Coffee #White #Understanding

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
-- Brian Aldiss

#Creativity #Men #Years

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.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Identity #Wells

Why had I become a writer in the first place? Because I wasn't fit for society; I didn't fit into the system.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Society #Firsts #Fit

A writer should say to himself, not, How can I get more money?, but How can I reach more readers (without lowering standards)?
-- Brian Aldiss

#Writing #Should #More Money

Science fiction is the search for a definition of mankind and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post Gothic mode.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Confused #Fiction #Definitions

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.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Love #Dream #Night

Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Distance #Men #Civilization

The fatal error of much science fiction has been to subscribe to an optimism based on the idea that revolution, or a new gimmick, or a bunch of strong men, or an invasion of aliens, or the conquest of other planets, or the annihilation of half the world--in short, pretty nearly anything but the facing up to the integral and irredeemable nature of mankind--can bring about utopian situations. It is the old error of the externalization of evil.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Strong #Men #Errors

Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Pride #Reality #Names

It is comparatively easy to become a writer; staying a writer, resisting formulaic work, generating ones own creativity - thats a much tougher matter.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Creativity #Matter #Easy

Science fiction is for real, space opera is for fun.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Fun #Real #Space

The day of the android has dawned.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Androids

Feedback is a pleasant thing. I get a lot of letters from unexpected people in unexpected places.
-- Brian Aldiss

#People #Letters #Unexpected

The prose poem Walk The Red Road is great stuff and deserves to be read aloud. It compares quite favorably to The Walls Of Emerald by Li Chiang Yen, a Chinese poet of the late Tang period.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Wall #Chinese #Red

However you envisage your role in life, all you can do is perform it as best you can.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Roles #Roles In Life

If more people had put their fellow human beings before abstractions last century, we shouldn't be where we are now.
-- Brian Aldiss

#People #Lasts #Century

The shuffle only demonstrated people's fatuous belief in a political cure for a human condition.
-- Brian Aldiss

#People #Political #Belief

All over the world there must be far-reaching changes in animal behavior and habitat; if only one could have another life in which to chart it all....Ah, well, that's not a fruitful thing to wish, is it?
-- Brian Aldiss

#Animal #Wish #Habitat

I've no objection to morality, except that it's obsolete.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Morality #Obsolete

Relax, enjoy yourself. Have another drink. It's patriotic to overconsume.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Patriotic #Relax #Drink

Let's have a toast-to the future generation of consumers, however many heads or ***** they have!
-- Brian Aldiss

#Generations #Consumers #Future Generation

It's a national failing to think of politics as something that goes on in Parliament. It isn't; it's something that goes on inside us.
-- Brian Aldiss

#Thinking #Goes On #Failing

What were several fewer species of animals compared with a hundred-mile advance and another medal on another general?
-- Brian Aldiss

#Animal #Hundred #Miles