Nicoll Quotes & Sayings

Until recently baby production was largely dependent on slave labour; as soon as women are allowed to answer the question "Would you like to squeeze as many objects the size of a watermelon out of your body as it takes to kill you?" they generally answer "No, thank you." This leads to falling birthrates everywhere women are not kept enslaved and ignorant of the alternatives. — James Nicoll

The Kindle Paperwhite is hypoallergenic. — Leslie H. Nicoll

Romeo and Juliet *died*. I always liked that in a teen romance story. — James Nicoll

Most of my scars are not fire-related and I no longer say "I know what I am doing" at critical moments. — James Nicoll

Everything you do consciously is preserved for you: everything you do mechanically, since you did not do it, is lost. — Maurice Nicoll

I have hated every Kress I read, especially this one, but the Bear is a standard Bear and if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like. — James Nicoll

Ben Bova seems to work very hard at working in new discoveries into his Glum Future but alas, his future is glum and not that well written. — James Nicoll

You may have trouble getting permission to aero or lithobrake asteroids on Earth. — James Nicoll

My father once discovered that one cannot "walk off" gangrene. — James Nicoll

I believe that I have now experienced the lifetime maximum exposure to bottom spanking in fantasy novels. — James Nicoll

Maurice Nicoll says all history is a living today. We are not enjoying one spark of life in a huge, dead waste. We are, instead, existing at one point in a vast process of the living who still think and feel but are invisible to us. — Richard Matheson

I think once you start eating people you should stop claiming to be a vegetarian, even if you only eat bad people. — James Nicoll

The level above Man is called the Kingdom of Heaven or Kingdom of God in the Gospels. It has many other names in different writings. In the Gospels, it is said that the Kingdom of Heaven is within. It is at a higher level of a man. To reach it, a man must reach a higher level in himself. If everyone did this, the level of life on this earth would change. — Maurice Nicoll

About Antrax by Terry Brooks: I wonder if he's planning a book called SRS? Or F'lu? — James Nicoll

After enough concussions the head injuries blur together. — James Nicoll

All our theories of improving the world, while we are still asleep, merely intensify the sleep of humanity. — Maurice Nicoll

This is the sort of book that justifies fatwahs. If WWIII occurred right now, we could die happy knowing Baxter would never write again. If a dinosaur killing asteroid was headed for Earth and I knew Baxter had another book coming up, I would campaign for letting the rock hit, since it is obviously the work of a benovelent deity trying to save us from another Titan. — James Nicoll

It is always more pleasant to meet with one who is a bookman than with one who is not. — W. Robertson Nicoll

[Elizabeth Moon's] antagonists are always evil moustache-twirlers. She could write a book about a golf open and the main rival to the hero would turn out to have clubs made from compressed kittens. — James Nicoll

You have a right not to be negative. — Maurice Nicoll

Manitoba ... Not sure what to do about them. Restock the province with megafauna and encourage tourism, I think. How quickly can we breed back the saber-toothed cats? — James Nicoll

Humanity is regarded as unfinished, incomplete, imperfect. We have the possibility of completing ourselves, perfecting ourselves, and all that is necessary for this lies in us. — Maurice Nicoll

The past in retrospect holds manifold disenchantments, failures and even tragedies; and yet the worse may be forgotten and the best held fast. — William Robertson Nicoll

Deadly nightshade is the only plant I have ever been able to get to grow for me. — James Nicoll

Gun-wielding recluse gunned down by local police" isn't the epitaph I want. I am hoping for "Witnesses reported the sound up to two hundred kilometers away" or "Last body part finally located". — James Nicoll

The neurologist and psychologist Maurice Nicoll told how he had once asked his headmaster about a passage in the Bible, and after he had listened to the answer for some time, he realized that the man had no idea what he was talking about. What I admire about Nicoll is that he made this discovery when he was only ten. It took me another forty-five years before the penny dropped: very, very few people have any idea what they are talking about. — John Cleese

The Work is something living in our hearts and minds. Follow the path, see what changes take place within you, and what light begins to dawn in you. — Maurice Nicoll

How then can we change being? By applying the knowledge of the Work through self-observation to ourselves. And remember that you do not change by being told what to do. You only change through seeing what you have to do when you realize what your being is like. — Maurice Nicoll

My grandfather for example only died twice, once during the war and once in the 1980s. — James Nicoll

Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts — James Nicoll

It is like the man who became short-sighted and refused to wear glasses, saying there was nothing wrong with him, but that the trouble was that the recent papers were so badly printed. — Maurice Nicoll

I will also tell you a secret. We have to will one another: this is the beginning of conscious love. — Maurice Nicoll

Love is ordinary, love is dull, love is the natural condition of the human heart, love is the message we carry branded on us from the womb but only the best of us will dare to read it and, even when we dare to read it to people who can never understand, it is still there in us like the rings in a tree or the ridges in a shell, part of us, marking the years and the drought and the growth, even if nobody sees it until the tree is cut down. — Andrew Nicoll

Call me an extremist but killing a few hundred million people seems like the sort of method that might have unintended consequences. — James Nicoll

I am inclined to put the zenith of success-the time of most consideration and public labor -as somewhere in the sixties, say from sixty-five to seventy. — William Robertson Nicoll

I can't help but notice that everytime I fly somewhere, other people's planes fall out of the sky. — James Nicoll

Never bring a gun to a fight where the other guy has a time-machine and tomorrow's newspapers. — James Nicoll

It's bad to wake up and see a large cat in mid-leap from the rough vicinity of the ceiling. — James Nicoll

I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface. — James Nicoll

English doesn't borrow from other languages. english follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar. — James Nicoll

It's interesting to see how some of the womenswear designers that we have long worked with at Net-A-Porter are developing menswear collections - Christopher Kane, Jonathan Saunders and Richard Nicoll. — Natalie Massenet

We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. — James Nicoll

The central conception of Man in the Gospels is that he is an unfinished creation capable of reaching a higher level by a definite evolution which must begin by his own efforts. — Maurice Nicoll

About First Landing by Robert Zubrin: Someday I'd like to read a story about competent people on Mars. — James Nicoll