John Brunner: Trending quotes

“The whole of modern so-called civilised existence is an attempt to deny reality insofar as it exists. When did Don last look at the stars, when did Norman last get soaked in a rainstorm? The stars as far as these people are concerned are the Manhattan-pattern!”

“What’s the price of life?” Donald countered bitterly.
continuity (37) “Storage”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“Rather painfully, we managed to digest Darwinian evolution so far as physical attributes were concerned within half a century of the initial controversy.”

He jerked his thumb at a window beyond which the city’s treasure-house of coloured light glimmered gaudily.
continuity (13) “Multiply by a Million”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“What are you going to do for a career?”

I say “we,” but if you’re a Bible-thumping fundamentalist I expect you at this point to take the book by one corner at arm’s length and ceremonially consign it to the place where you put most sensible ideas, along with everything else you decline to acknowledge the existence of, such as mainly shit.
context (5) “The Grand Manor”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“We’ve been amazingly lucky, which is another way of saying we’ve kept our eyes and minds open and responded when something turned up.”

Diverted from his orbit, Donald binked. “Well, something which uses up a minimum of my time, I imagine. So I can use the rest to mortar up the gaps in my education.”
continuity (3) “After One Decade”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“I simply can’t make myself believe that if they’d been handicapped by belief in capricious supernatural beings they’d have achieved what they did.”

Source: Total Eclipse (1974), Chapter 15 (p. 125)

“There’s an old saying: The genius sees what happens, but the plodder sees what he expects to happen.”

Source: Total Eclipse (1974), Chapter 14 (p. 116)

“How can a man be so brilliant and so obtuse?”

Source: Total Eclipse (1974), Chapter 10 (p. 88)

“Damn it, man: anyone who can treat another human being as an object for target practice is stuck even further back in the infantile stage than somebody who’s frightened to move on from the masturbation phase and go to bed with a girl!”

Source: Total Eclipse (1974), Chapter 8 (p. 69)

“What’s happened to us that we take killings for granted among our children? Don’t give me that hogwash about students at college having to be treated as adults—there’s nothing adult about playing with guns and grenades!”

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 78 (p. 284)

“It was his hope and ambition to cause many deaths. He was an arms salesman by choice, calm and even a little happy to see his products in such demand, capable of trying to clinch a sale at the bedside of a fresh corpse.”

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 78, “No, Of Course Logorrhea Isn’t What Happens When You Break a Log-Jam But the Result Is Pretty Much the Same for Anyone Who’s in the Way ” (p. 282)

“The sound of shutters going up around her mind, armored against anything short of a nuke, was very nearly audible in the room.”

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 51, “If Your Number Comes Up Then Your Number Comes Up and That’s All There Is to It So What’s the Use of Worrying That’s What I Always Say” (p. 163)

“Well-intentioned men don’t run for office any more! They have too much sense to expose themselves to assassination, and only delusible idiots like our current chief executive can be persuaded to don the robes of high office. Nice guys don’t crave power.”

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 47, “Plea of Insanity” (p. 146)

“The sound of a code being broken is usually the same as that of somebody snapping his fingers.”

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 46, “Why’s, After the Event” (p. 143)

“Like all neo-puritans you have a mind like an open drain.”

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 45 (p. 135; chapter title)