The Muties have a proverb: Two heads are better than none. -- Forrest J. Ackerman A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. -- Douglas Adams The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't. -- Douglas Adams "Listen, three eyes," he said, "don't you try to outweird me. I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal." -- Douglas Adams Once there had been a great proud star, bright as a hundred Sols. -- Poul Anderson "Mister, do you have a cracker for my oontatherium?" -- Poul Anderson It was the day my grandmother exploded. -- Iain Banks Culverts roared from fortress walls, volleys of omnibus and festoon fire swept the battle plains of the north, escrees clashed at a hundred dark crossroads. -- John Barnes The wakechimes touched me with the sound of cinnamon. -- Neal Barrett, Jr. The city that had occupied Mesa Canaan was now marching across the plain. -- Greg Bear Most of the time, the mirror's singing voice might have been compared with that of a tubercular reed organ; but when it hit high notes, Prospero thought of children with long nails scraping on blackboards. -- John Bellairs "We've been having some trouble with Sector 8," he said, waving a wooden pointer. "A couple of planets are doing a horn-pipe, and before long--apocalypse!" -- John Bellairs "I think we must blame the terrible black planet Yuggoth, which rolls aimlessly in the stupefying darkness." -- John Bellairs He doesn't know which of us we are these days. -- Alfred Bester Tension, apprehension, and dissention have begun. -- Alfred Bester There are two ways to tell a wizard. -- Terry Bisson Meanwhile the jar lid quit turning and fell off. Nothing came out and kept coming. -- Terry Bisson "They're made out of meat." "Meat?" "Meat. They're made out of meat." -- Terry Bisson They didn't used to call Louisville the Mile High City. -- Terry Bisson It had already been raining for six days when the enormous shoe washed up onto the beach. -- James P. Blaylock It was a pleasure to burn. -- Ray Bradbury It's just a furry with a syringe on top. -- Grendel Briarton If you had my experience with Transylvanian cuisine, you too would be able to recognize Hungarian ghoul ash. -- Grendel Briarton My dear Tolkien, I said it was harmless. I never said it was non-Hobbit-forming. -- Grendel Briarton A single, faceted eye, front center in the head, watched the seven dials unwinkingly. -- Fredric Brown Monumental task, painting a world, for creatures half an inch tall. -- Fredric Brown Coming towards you it looked as though a piano with hydrophobia had suddenly run wild and opened huge bulbous eyes with enormous thick - somehow sad - lashes. -- John Brunner Vlad knew almost at once that I was in disguise, because I told him so. When he called out my name, I said "Dammit, Vlad, I'm in disguise." -- Steven Brust Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out. -- Arthur C. Clarke K-ward lay the flattened spiral of the home galaxy. -- Samuel R. Delany "Okay, he's dead. You can talk to him now." -- Greg Egan I always feel safest sleeping on the freeway. -- Greg Egan I should have known that something was very wrong when the mules started flying erratically. -- Suzette Hayden Elgin Mrs. Whitaker found the Holy Grail; it was under a fur coat. -- Neil Gaiman One does a deal with the demon: a ten-pack of blank floppies for his soul. -- Neil Gaiman The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. -- William Gibson "This is cheese?" Chuck asked, and withdrew a spherical black lump from the target area. -- Harry Harrison Nothing was ever printed about it, only a thousand whispered words heard on a thousand worlds around the galaxy. -- Harry Harrison It doesn't end with one---it begins with a whimper. -- R. A. Lafferty I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination. -- Ursula K. Le Guin There was a wall. It did not look important. -- Ursula K. Le Guin In those days there were oceans of light and cities in the skies and wild flying beasts of bronze. -- Michael Moorcock "I am the Dread Pirate Roberts and there will be no survivors." -- S. Morgenstern "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya; you killed my father; prepare to die." -- S. Morgenstern "Have you ever waltzed naked in God's navel, Tom?" -- James Morrow The doorknob opened a blue eye and looked at him. -- Lewis Padgett Simple men are driven to early beds by tomorrow's daytime demands and by fear of the dark, and never dream of the irregular world outside. -- Alexei Panshin There are places where the stars don't grow. -- Alexei Panshin The girl with the green hair giggled. "I ain't never ate no live brain before." -- Rudy Rucker It is impossible to call up the Devil when women are present. -- Joanna Russ The huge red ball of a sun hung glowing upon the screen. -- Michael Shaara It was the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton. -- Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson "Let's take it point by point. Do you remember by any chance where you were when you first noticed that your body was missing?" -- Robert Sheckley The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. -- Neal Stephenson The High House, Evenmere, that lifts its gabled roofs among tall hills overlooking a country of ivy and hawthorne and blackberries sweet but small as the end of a child's finger, has seldom been seen by ordinary men. -- James Stoddard One by one the blue mutants crawled away, spitting out the torn, bloody fragments. -- Theodore Sturgeon The train to Hell don't stop in New Jersey. -- Michael Swanwick In the Year One, we came in an armada of a million spacecraft to settle upon, colonize, and claim for our homeland this giant grasshopper on which we now dwell. -- Michael Swanwick It loomed vast in the glare of the distant yellow-white sun. -- A. E. van Vogt "Do stars hiss and sizzle when rain comes by night?" -- Jack Vance Someone was speaking to Xanthia from the end of a ten-kilometer metal pipe, shouting to be heard across a roomfull of gongs and cymbals being knocked over by angry giant bees. -- John Varley 'In five years, the penis will be obsolete,' said the salesman. -- John Varley The manhunt extended across more than a hundred light years and eight centuries. -- Vernor Vinge Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. -- Kurt Vonnegut "They are my innards! I will not have them misread by a poseur!" -- Roger Zelazny