Brian W. Aldiss: Quotes about time

Brian W. Aldiss was British science fiction author. Explore interesting quotes on time.
Brian W. Aldiss: 232 quotes14 likes

“"Teddy, you know what I was thinking? How do you tell what are real things from what aren't real things?"
The bear shuffled its alternatives. "Real things are good."
"I wonder if time is good. I don't think Mummy likes time very much. The other day, lots of days ago, she said that time went by her. Is time real, Teddy?"”

Brian W. Aldiss book Super-Toys Last All Summer Long

Super-Toys Last All Summer Long (1969)

“Monica Swinton, twenty-nine, of graceful shape and lambent eye, went and sat in her living room, arranging her limbs with taste. She began by sitting and thinking; soon she was just sitting. Time waited on her shoulder with the maniac slowth it reserves for children, the insane, and wives whose husbands are away improving the world.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Super-Toys Last All Summer Long

Super-Toys Last All Summer Long (1969)

“The directors of Synthank were eating an enormous luncheon to celebrate the launching of their new product. Some of them wore the plastic face-masks popular at the time. All were elegantly slender, despite the rich food and drink they were putting away. Their wives were elegantly slender, despite the food and drink they too were putting away. An earlier and less sophisticated generation would have regarded them as beautiful people, apart from their eyes.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Super-Toys Last All Summer Long

Super-Toys Last All Summer Long (1969)

“The hardship of it was a pleasure. Life was a pleasure; he looked back at its moments, many of them as shrouded in mist as the opposite bank of the Thames. Objectively, many of them held only misery, fear, confusion; but afterward, and even at the time, he had known an exhilaration stronger than the misery, fear, or confusion. A fragment of belief came to him from another epoch: Cogito ergo sum. For him that had not been true; his truth had been: Sentio ergo sum. I feel, so I exist. He enjoyed this fearful, miserable, confused life, and not only because it made more sense than nonlife. He could never explain that to anyone.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Greybeard

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 3 “The River: Swifford Fair” (p. 75)

“Irreconcilables: he should stay here and conform; he should — not stay here (remembering no time when he was not here, Harley could frame the second idea no more clearly than that). Another point of pain was that "here" and "not here" seemed to be not two halves of a homogeneous whole, but two dissonances.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Outside

Outside (1955)

“One of the characteristics of age was that all avenues of talk led backward in time.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Greybeard

Source: Greybeard (1964), Chapter 1 “The River: Sparcot” (p. 21)

“Did the others here feel the disquiet he felt? Had they a reason for concealing that disquiet? And another question:
Where was "here"?
He shut that one down sharply.
Deal with one thing at a time. Grope your way gently to the abyss. Categorize your knowledge.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Outside

Outside (1955)

“You know that if you had been in charge of creation you would have found some medium less heart-breaking than Time to stage it in.”

Brian W. Aldiss

“Poor Little Warrior!” p. 79
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“All the time, he hoped they would understand that his arrogance masked only shyness—or did he hope that it was his shyness which masked arrogance? He did not know.
Who could presume to know? The one quality holds much of the other. Both refuse to come forward and share.”

Brian W. Aldiss

“A Kind of Artistry” p. 185
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

“Many Franks of the sixteenth generation were killed in the muck of the trenches, he died not once but many times, developing an obsessive dread of war which never left him.
By the time the Americans entered the war, he was turning his many thoughts to politics.”

Brian W. Aldiss

Let's Be Frank (1957)

“There was a time, two or three centuries ago, when it looked as if the intellect might win over the body, and our species become something worthwhile. But too much procreation killed that illusion.”

Brian W. Aldiss

“Man on Bridge” p. 92
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)