Fredric Brown

“She was sleeping. He nudged her gently and whispered a suggestion. Her eyes opened wide and startled. "No, no, a dozen times no!""Only a doezen times?" he asked, and then leered. "My deer," he whispered, "think of the fawn you'll have!"”

“He had been cheated out of his compensation, on a technicality, by the corrupt officialdom of the spaceways. He’d turned criminal then, and had been as ruthless to society as it had been to him.”

“He thought, “Anyway, do not judge the human race by my opinion of it. I am a criminal, every hand against me and my hand against every man—especially the metal hand that is my best weapon. Men have treated me badly; I have repaid them in kind. But do not judge them by what I think of them. Perhaps I am more warped than they.””

“The face of danger is brightest when turned so its features cannot be seen.”

“Yes, it was swell to sleep when you were looking forward to something. Time flies by and you don’t even hear the rustle of its wings.”

““One may think,” said the professor, “of an absolute as a mode of being—”Yeah, thought Shorty McCabe, one may think of anything as anything else, and what does it get you but a headache.”

“He knew that soon, perhaps even today, something important was going to happen. Whether good or bad he did not know, but he darkly suspected. And with reason: there are few good things that may unexpectedly happen to a man, things, that is, of lasting importance. Disaster can strike from innumerable directions, in amazingly diverse ways.”

“Paranoia is a form of insanity which, Dr. Randoph told me, hasn’t any physical symptoms. It’s just a delusion supported by a systematic framework of rationalization. A paranoiac can be sane in every way except one.”

“In twenty to thirty thousand years memories become legends and legends become superstitions and even the superstitions become lost. Metals rust and corrode back into earth while the wind, the rain and the jungle erode and cover stone. The contours of the very continents change—and glaciers come and go, and a city of twenty thousand years before is under miles of earth or miles of water.”

“Well, let’s call his age as pushing sixty and not mention from which direction he was pushing it.”

“He could see now what a lot of his mistakes had been—laziness among them. And laziness is curable.”

“The ever-present possibility of making a big mistake worried him.He’d have worried about it more if he’d known that he already had.”

“It’s indecent and inhuman to put full length mirrors in bathroom doors. They cause narcissism in the young and unhappiness in the old.”

“Living creatures, sea gulls, soaring lazily and gracefully overhead. Living creatures, a group of girls, walking by, giggling and jiggling. The lazy rhythm of the waves, the sun’s warmth and the sky’s blueness.I waved my arm at it. “All this, M’bassi. All this and the stars too. Isn’t it enough without having to invent a religion and a God?””

“I wished that I could pray. Then I did pray, “God, I don’t believe that you exist, and I believe that if you do exist you’re an impersonal entity and that if you notice the fall of sparrows you don’t do anything about it, on request or otherwise, but if I’m wrong, I’m sorry. And in case I’m wrong I pray to you that...””

“A lot of my childhood playmates ended up behind bars and I don’t mean as bartenders.”

““But do you believe they really teleported?”“Let’s grant that. Tell me why you think he isn’t a mistaken one.””

“Bad, I thought, looking around me, that I’d accumulated so much. A man should never own more stuff than he can carry in his hands at a dead run. It was bad, but it had happened.”

“I sought her in the grayness and she wasn’t there, she was dead and she wasn’t there, she wouldn’t be there ever again and I could never find comfort in her again. Ellen, beloved, you are dead and your voice is in my mind and only in my mind.”

““Nuts,” said the Martian. “You people got rocks in your heads, that’s what accounts for your superstitions.””

“A new racket, probably. A depression breeds rackets as a swamp breeds mosquitoes.”

“It was not the fashion for politicians who aspired to elective office to live ostentatiously, no matter how much money they had. If they loved luxury—and most of them did—they indulged that love in ways less publicly obvious than by living in mansions. The public believes what it thinks it sees.”

“I want men who, like you, would not take orders even if I should give them. I do not want to be a god, Crag, even though I have some powers beyond mankind’s; I would not let my new world be colonized by people who might even be tempted to obey me.”

““Are you interested in science?”“Of course I am. Who isn’t?””

“The cat didn’t answer, except possibly by not answering.”

“Strangely, he wasn’t scared at all. He was even more coldly calm, calmly analytical. And he knew that he would have to be if he was to stand a chance to win this war. If he was to win it, his mind would have to be his major weapon; firearms might win a battle, but never the war.”

“Her life, except for reading, had been dull—but it had not been in vain.”