John Brunner: Trending quotes (page 2)

“I never thought of asking anyone to do it for me. Something’s wrong with me. In a time of trouble should people not be able to ask help without feeling demeaned?”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

tracking with closeups (31) “Unto Us a Child”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

People , Feeling , Time , Help

“There’s one bright spot in the generally gloomy picture know as the Pacific Conflict Zone. According to my calculations, by the year 2500 or so we should have killed off every last member of our species who is stupid enough to take part in so futile a pastime as this war between “ideals,” and with luck they won’t have left their genes behind because they’ll typically have been killed at an age when society thinks they’re too young to assume the responsibility of childbearing. After that we may get some peace and quiet for a change.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

context (8) “Isolation”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

War , Age , Stupidity , Peace

“Never marry a good church-going girl, Billy! They can always find moral justifications for anything they feel like doing, no matter how it hurts other people.”

John Brunner book The Stone That Never Came Down

Source: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 5 (p. 44)

People , Feeling , Girl , Hurt

“Like living creatures, automobiles expired when their environment became saturated with their own excreta. We ourselves are living creatures. We don't want the same to happen to us.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

context (2) "Editorial Slot"
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“He was wondering what society would have been like if we’d socialised cannabis instead of dangerous drugs like alcohol and religion.”

John Brunner book The Stone That Never Came Down

Source: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 3 (p. 26)

Alcohol , Religion

“When did you last bask in the sun, friends? When did you last dare drink from a creek? When did you last risk picking fruit and eating it straight from the tree? What were your doctor’s bills last year? Which of you live in cities where you don’t wear a filtermask? Which of you spent this year’s vacation in the mountains because the sea is fringed with garbage?”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

November “THERE IS HOPE YET”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Mountain , Drink , Tree , Sun

“If there is a hell, perhaps it consists in living up to all one’s promises.”

John Brunner book The Tides of Time

Source: The Tides of Time (1984), Chapter 11 (p. 202)

Hell

“I marvel’d how Man, by his GOD-sent wit,
Thus tam’d the salamander Element
And loos’d the Metal in the mountain pent
To make us Saws, and Shears, and useful Plows,
Swords for our hands, and Helmets for our brows,
The surgeon’s Scalpel, vehicle of Health,
And all our humble Tools for gaining wealth...
”De Arte Munificente,” Seventeenth century”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

September “MOTHER-RAPERS”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

God , Health , Art , Mountain

“You have many years to live—do things you will be proud to remember when you're old.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (27) "Manscape"
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“At night, when he lay down to sleep, he felt that his brain was resonating with the heartbeat of the planet.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

January “EARTHMOVER”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Sleep , Night

“All this time, though, this feeling that the world was ‘’bound’’ to go to hell! Okay, so it’s true these mothers have turned prairies into dustbowls and used the sea for a giant sewer and laid concrete where there used to be forests. So stop them! Don’t just let them walk over you, crush you face-down into the dirt!
Crush them first!”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

April “REHEARSAL”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

World , Feeling , Hell , Time

“Nothing short of religion could persuade a normal girl to make herself look so awful.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

tracking with closeups (2) “Yonderboy”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Religion , Girl

“One might as well claim that the tide which rubs pebbles smooth on a beach is doing the pebbles a service because being round is prettier than being jagged. It's of no concern to a pebble what shape it is. But it's very important to a person.”

John Brunner The Shockwave Rider

Bk. 2, Ch. "Let's All Be Different Same As Me"
The Shockwave Rider (1975)

Personality

“How do you get away with it? Above all, how do you persuade people to risk their lives in order to kill total strangers whom they know almost literally nothing about? Why, the answer’s simple. You lie to them!”

John Brunner book The Stone That Never Came Down

Source: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 17 (p. 135)

People , Lie

“NEGRO Member of a subgroup of the human race who hails, or whose ancestors hailed, from a chunk of land nicknamed—not by its residents—Africa. Superior to the Caucasian in that negroes did not invent nuclear weapons, the automobile, Christianity, nerve gas, the concentration camp, military epidemics, or the megalopolis.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

context (6) “One Comes Out Where...”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“Get me a drink of water, please, and something to quiet my belly. It’s rumbling so much I can’t hear myself think.”

John Brunner book The Tides of Time

Source: The Tides of Time (1984), Chapter 3 (p. 48)

Drink , Thinking , Water

“How do you whip up resentment against absentee landlords and pocketers of bribes when the highest ambition of the people is either to become the former or be in a position to receive the latter?”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

context (8) “Isolation”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

People

“Of course, lately he has been very upset about the state of the world. But isn’t everybody who bothers to pay attention?”

John Brunner book The Stone That Never Came Down

Source: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 3 (p. 27)

World

“It's not because my mind is made up that I don't want you to confuse me with any more facts. It's because my mind isn't made up. I already have more facts than I can cope with.”

John Brunner The Shockwave Rider

Bk. 1, Ch. "Paradox, Next Stop After the Boondocks
The Shockwave Rider (1975)

“Joel groaned softly. “I-ah-I don’t think I was altogether myself,” he excused.
“Are you ever?” Bertrand countered.
“What?”
“I am always my self, even when my objurgatory circuits are cut in by some frustration-inducing outside event. But you’re invariably either drunk or suffering indigestion or still half-asleep or so excited as to be manic or so downcast as to be suicidal or—”
Loftily Joel broke in: “That’s part of the marvel and wonder of the subjective human experience, not susceptible machine analysis.” He gulped the last of his brandy and set the glass aside. “And we are a fantastic species really, aren’t we? For all our shortcomings! I mean, well—here I am talking to a machine, for pity’s sake, a machine, a manufactured article! So cleverly designed, it’s impossible to tell that its responses are programmed in, not the result of intelligence.””

John Brunner

“I resent that,” Bertrand said, but Joel ignored the comment.
Section 6 (pp. 135-136)
You’ll Take the High Road (1973)

Intelligence , Thinking , Suicide , Suffering