AoC

“Pity always was a luxury. It’s all right if the tragedy’s a comfortable distance away – if you can watch it from a seat in the cinema. It’s different when you find it on your doorstep – on every doorstep.”
― John Christopher, The Death of Grass

“After all, show me a man who dislikes being raped slowly and enthusiastically by a hotblooded gorgeous Irish colleen, and I’ll show you a man with a problem.”
― David Graham, Down to a Sunless Sea

“No, but you see what I mean: you should be able to renew your youth in the generation that follows yours. In your thirties, your sons keep you nimble and laughing. In your forties, they keep you worried and attached to the world. In your fifties, you may have grandchildren to play with. You can live till your grandchildren come along to see your creaking smiles and your card tricks… They replenish you. If everyone's cut off from all that — who's to wonder if time goes wrong, or if poor old Charley gets some crazy idea about seeing gnomes?”
― Brian W. Aldiss, Greybeard

“And explaining them - I now feel myself duty-bound to do it, if only because I am the author of these records, to say nothing of the fact that the unknown is in general the enemy of man, and Homo sapiens is not fully man until his grammar is absolutely rid of question marks, leaving nothing but exclamation points, commas, and periods.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We