Algis Budrys Quotes

You look like any other brainless jackanapes," he mused, "but apparently there's some gray matter left in your artfully coiffed skull after all.

“Can I drive you down to your house?”
The man flicked an expressive glance along the car’s length and shook his head. “Thanks. I’ll walk. There’s still a law of averages.”
And you can take that phrase and carve it on Humanity’s headstone, Fay thought bitterly, but did not reply.

I—ah—have some idea."
"You argue?"
"I propose."
"Marriage?"
"No. Another form of dialectical antagonism.

Sentiment was the easy thing. But logic reminded a man that some people insisted on living their neighbor’s lives, that some people were offensive.
There were people with moral codes they clung to and lived by, people who worshiped in what they held to be the only orthodox way, people who clung to some idea—some rock on which their lives rested. Well and good. But if they tried to inflict these reforms on their neighbors, patience could only go so far, and the tolerance of fanaticism lasts just so long.

You know, even more than playing chess, I dislike dealing with self-righteous chess players.

There are various uses for time, and I have better ones than this.

That was a classic maniacal farrago, and it boils down to his not being able to understand the world. It wasn’t necessary to count the contradictions after the first one.

You're sincere enough." She laughed shortly. "Heaven protect the human race from the sincere idealist!

There’re limits to what civilized people can bring out into the open, no matter how savagely they can speculate.

Smart isn't 'Can you do it, is it good to do?' Smart is 'Can you make 'em believe what you're doing is real?' And real is 'Can you get financing for it?'

Only gods and television audiences see the pattern of human events.

I don’t know...but then, if God had intended Man to think, He would have given him brains, I suppose.

And, in Cot’s mind as in that of every other human being, what had been a twinging secret shame was disastrous and disgusting as a public horror.

I know what Claire is. You know I know it. I told you the first minute I met you. But did you ever stop to think it’s all worth it to me? Every time she makes a pass at another man, I know she’s comparing. She’s out on the open market, shopping. And being shopped for. I don’t have any collar around her neck She’s not tame. I’m not a habit to her. I’m not something she’s tied to by any law. And every time she winds up coming back to me, you know what that proves. It proves I’m still the toughest man in the pack. Because she wouldn’t stay if I wasn’t.

Nobody liked him. Nobody loved him—and this bothered him. But everyone kowtowed to him, and that, it seems, was what he held most precious.