Quotes from Fredric Brown

THERE IS A LOVELY LITTLE horror story about the peasant who started through the haunted wood—the wood that was, people said, inhabited by devils who took any mortal who came their way. But the peasant thought, as he walked slowly along: I am a good man and have done no wrong. If devils can harm me, then there isn't any justice. A voice behind him said, "There isn't.

There is a sweet little horror story that is only two sentences long: 'The last man on Earth sat along in a room. There was a knock at the door…' Two sentences and an ellipsis of three dots. The horror, of course, isn't in the story at all; it's in the ellipsis, the implication: what knocked at the door. Faced with the unknown, the human mind supplies something vaguely horrible.

people are complicated; you can't label 'em with a word.

It should not matter, but it does. I want to know how many hours of the night are gone and how many remain and that there is no good reason for my wanting to know does not stop the wanting.

The human race will last. Everywhere and forever, for it will never be sane and only insanity is divine. Only the mad destroy themselves and all they have wrought. And only the phoenix lives forever.

The funeral was beautiful. I didn't mind it, really. It wasn't exactly Pop's funeral, to me. When I'd been alone with him, there in the little room, well, that was it, as far as I was concerned. I'd said good-bye to him, sort of, then. This was just something you had to go through with, on account of other people and out of respect for Pop.

When you look out of a window, when you look at anything, you know what you're seeing? Yourself. A thing can only look beautiful or romantic or inspiring only if the beauty or romance or inspiration is inside you.

Fortunately, I have forgotten most of the things that have happened to me. Fortunately, the mind has a limited capacity for remembering. It would be horrible if I remembered the details of a hundred and eighty thousand years—the details of four thousand lifetimes that I have lived since the first great atomic war.

The older you get, the less afraid of ghosts you are - whether you believe in them or not. By the time you pass the fifty mark you've known so many people who are now dead that ghosts, if there are any, aren't all strangers. Some of your best friends are ghosts; why should you be afraid of them? And it's not too many years before you'll all be on the other side of the fence yourself.

Tracy stood up and found that the room was swaying around him in a manner that would have been more disconcerting if it had been less familiar.

Ce sera, dit-il au garçon venu prendre la commande de son dessert, un supervibrateur subatomique antiextraterrestre

He turned to the want ads, looked for MALE HELP WANTED

Against accusations of being a crackpot, he could have proved that he was sane. He had papers to show it, given him upon his release from a mental institution where once, some years before, he had been briefly incarcerated.

Juju must hang clear of ground,' he said. M'Carthi gave an order, and three black bucks leaped to obey it. They tied a rope of woven vines around the juju and one of them shinned up the tree and passed the rope over a limb; the other two hoisted the juju

It's perfectly logical,' said Dr Snyder. 'It's absolutely proved. You can't lie.' 'But I can,' said the Martian. 'Work on the logic of that a while, Mack.

Yes, there was the PFAM. The Psychological Front Against Martians.

Oh, just a minute, Mrs. Carr. What department at Bonney's does your husband work in?" "The Roman candle department." It made me forget, for the moment, what I'd been leading up to. I said, "The Roman candle department! That's a wonderful phrase; I love it. If I sell the paper, darned if I don't look up Bonney the very next day. I'd love to work in the Roman candle department. Your husband is a lucky man." "You're

No one can tell time except approximately, time never stands still to be named.

Don't ever sell mankind short by saying there's anything they can't do.

There is a sweet little horror story that is only two sentences long: The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door... Two sentences and an ellipsis of three dots.