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.

Science fiction is for real, space opera is for fun.

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

When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults.

It's a funny thing in my job: you remain perpetually lonely in a world where loneliness is the rarest commodity.

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