Alexander Shmid

“That’s not what’s bothering you, is it? You’re worried about what they might find. Or have we all misjudged you and you’re really a high-minded seeker after knowledge, a true devotee of pushing back the frontiers of the known universe?’ ‘Hell, no.’ Parker didn’t seem the least offended by Ripley’s casual sarcasm. ‘I’m a true devotee of pushing back the frontiers of my bank account.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“He did not put his feelings down to simple xenophobia. Basically, he hadn’t expected the alien to be so completely alien.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“Curiosity, after all, was what had driven mankind out from his isolated, unimportant world and across the gulf between the stars. It had also, he thoughtfully reminded himself, killed the figurative cat.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien

“It was exciting and intellectually gratifying to speculate on what might lie waiting in the black gulfs when one was behind the business end of a telescope, quite another to do so isolated on an unpleasant little speck of a world such as this, confronted by a ship of non-human manufacture that uncomfortably resembled a growth instead of a familiar device for manipulating and overcoming the neat laws of physics.”
― Alan Dean Foster, Alien