Favorite Quotations From Science Fiction [ under long-term construction]

1. 'You'd better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It's unpleasantly like being drunk.'

'What's so unpleasant about being drunk?'

'You ask a glass of water.' - Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy , (1979), Chapter 6.

2. The universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.

Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their own devising, and this is what most beings in fact do. - Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980), Chapter 10.

3. Han Wavel is a world which consists largely of fabulous ultra-luxury hotels and casinos, all of which have been formed by the natural erosion of wind and rain. - Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe, and Everything (1982), Chapter 11.

4. It was the product of a mind that was not merely twisted, but actually sprained. - ibid., Chapter 18.

5. His head was swimming freestyle, but someone in his stomach was doing the butterfly. - ibid., Chapter 22.

6. His fingers fumbled to release the safety catch and engage the extreme danger catch as Ford had shown him. He was shaking so much that if he'd fired at anybody at that moment he probably would have burnt his signature on them. - ibid., Chapter 27.

7. The universe out there before us, close to the panes; stars like flaming fat, distorted by the dome's curvature, Earth like a chilled finger-nail clipping. - Brian Aldiss, "The Soft Predicament" in Comic Inferno (1972).

8. Life on Earth is such a delicate balance of chemical, physical and ecological factors, many of them due to sheer geological or evolutionary accident, that the probability of a world where men could live without elaborate artificial aids is lower than one dares think. - Poul Anderson, Planet of No Return (1956), Chapter 3.

9. There was a vitality in the believer type - whether he called himself Christian, Zionist, Communist, or any of a hundred other faiths which had shaken history. It was too bad that the reasonable man didn't share that devotion. But then, he wouldn't be reasonable if he did. - ibid., Chapter 9.

10. Monstrous it gloomed on the shore, and inland further than his vision went. Maps and diaglossa had told of an America webbed from end to end with megalopolis. Little broke that mass of concrete, steel, energy, ten billion slaves jammed together, save here and there a desert which had once been green countryside. The gutting of his land seemed so vast a crime that he needed no drug to cast fear out. Oh, Indian summers along the Smokies, he thought, I'm comin' to get revenge for you. - Poul Anderson, The Corridors of Time (1965), Chapter 15.

11. The ship quivered. Weight grabbed at Reymont. He barely avoided falling to the deck. A metal noise toned through the hull, like a basso profundo gong. It was soon over. Free flight resumed. Leonora Christine had gone through another galaxy. - Poul Anderson, Tau Zero (1970), Chapter 19.

12. "I'd trust him as far as I could spit a mouthful of fishhooks." - Christopher Anvil, The Day the Machines Stopped (1964), Chapter 8.

13. "There was a time when humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now he has creatures to help him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to him. Mankind is no longer alone. Have you ever thought of it that way?" - Isaac Asimov, I, Robot (1950), Introduction.

14. Actually, they were Simple-Lifers, hungering after a life, which to those who lived it had probably appeared not so Simple, and who had been, therefore, Simple-Lifers themselves. - ibid., "Evidence".