Fredric Brown Quotes & Sayings

There are no rules. You can write a story, if you wish, with no conflict, no suspense, no beginning, middle or end. Of course, you have to be regarded as a genius to get away with it, and that's the hardest part - convincing everybody you're a genius. — Fredric Brown

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. — Fredric Brown

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. — Fredric Brown

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

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

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. — Fredric Brown

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. — 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. — Fredric Brown

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. — Fredric Brown

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. — Fredric Brown

People are complicated; you can't label 'em with a word. — Fredric Brown