John Wyndham

"Bored! My God, to think that I could ever have been bored up there."

Fate is not above using inconsiderable details for her obscure purpose.

'There's a whole lot of people don't seem to understand that you have to talk to a man in his own language before he'll take you seriously.'

'We've got it all there in the books if we take the trouble to find out about it.'

'The wise lamb does not enrage the lion,' he said. 'It placates him, plays for time, and hopes for the best.'

'You know perfectly well that women can and do - or rather did - handle the most complicated and delicate machines when they took the trouble to understand them. What generally happens is that they're too lazy to take the trouble unless they have to.'

'The law punishes the criminal after he has been successful: it is no use to us.'

'And, after all, what is a planet but an island in space?'