I cant help believing that these things that come from the subconsciou — Brian Aldiss

"That first novel of mine, Non-Stop, is directly attributable to Heinlein. His "Common Sense" seemed to me such a good story, but bereft of any human feelings. I thought long about that story, and then I thought how wonderful it would be to write about a spaceship in which people have been imprisoned for generations and to put in something of the human feeling. So that novel is directly attributable to Heinlein. I thought, in my youthful arrogance, that I could do it better — I didnt! I thought I could do it differently, and I think I did do it differently. And I suppose that on the whole, Ive concentrated on doing things differently ever since."

"Aldiss’s second law of thermo-linguistics states that what is most popular is rarely best and that what is best is rarely most popular."

"Most SF is about madness, or what is currently ruled to be madness; this is part of its attraction — its always playing with how much the human mind can encompass."

"The Badlands were extensive. Ancient bomb craters and soil erosion joined hands here; man’s talent for war, coupled with his inability to manage forested land, had produced thousands of square miles of temperate purgatory, where nothing moved but dust."

"You were fool enough to think that one hundred and fifty million years either way made an ounce of difference to the muddle of thoughts in a man’s cerebral vortex."

"My wife Margaret and I sold our house to Sir Roger Penrose and his wife... Talking to Roger, I found we both agreed that AI, as they call it, is not going to be achieved by present-day machines."Artificial Intelligence" — that makes it sound simple, but what youre really talking about is artificial consciousness, AC. And I dont think theres any way we can achieve artificial consciousness, at least until weve understood the sources of our own consciousness. I believe consciousness is a mind/body creation, literally interwoven with the body and the bodys support systems. Well, you dont get that sort of thing with a robot."