94 Quotes by John Wyndham

There they sit, with everyone thinking no more of them than they might of a pretty odd lot of cabbages, yet half the time they’re pattering and clattering away at one another. Why? What is it they patter about? That’s what I want to know.’ I.

You don’t seriously suggest that thet’re talking when they make that rattling noise.

When almost half a lifetime has been spent in one conception of order, reorientation is no five-minute business.

They persisted in the face of discouragement until they gained the kind of acceptance accorded to the inevitable.

We are not shut away into individual cages from which we can reach out only with inadequate words.

In Oppley they’re smart, and in Stouch they’re smarmy, but Midwich folk are just plain barmy.

I’m quite sure there is a simple way. The trouble is that simple ways so often come out of such complicated research.

Reality is relative. Devils, evil spirits, witches and so on became real enough to the people who believed in them. Just as God is to people who believe in Him. When people live their lives by their beliefs objective reality is almost irrelevant.

Half the political intelligentsia who talk to a working audience don’t get the value of their stuff across – not so much because they’re over their audience’s heads, as because half the chaps are listening to the voice and not to the words, so they knock a big discount off what they do hear because it’s all a bit fancy, and not like ordinary, normal talk.