John Wyndham

One man's trash is another's souvenir.

You can half-expect things. Try to face them in advance, case-harden your mind, you think - but when they come, it's always different.

I'd begun to grasp the principle that the less anybody knows, the less any squealer can give away. And it was easy to see that in a place where questioning was liable to assume the aspect of a blood-sport, the less one did know about other people's business, the better.

Primitive man would see every one of us as a magician.

Practically everyone there had had an air of brooding privately with differing intensity. I knew now what it had reminded me of - the outpatients department of a hospital.

'Co-operation makes many things possible. Co-operation introduces a factor which is greater than the sum of its parts. [...] Such a tremendous thing - the ability to co-operate... It makes you wonder what we could do if we were really to co-operate.'

There is a sense of reason's fingernails scrabbling to keep their hold, as one slides towards something which is not accountable; not, by ordinary standards, quite sane...

I suppose we all have a number of carefully furnished, non-communicating rooms in our minds.

On the principle that if you walk briskly with an air of purpose ninety-nine per cent of the people you meet will assume it is a proper purpose, I did just that.

"The thing is to play your own game - not let the other feller force you to what he wants."

There is a degree of odds against which a gambler becomes just another mug.

"Life isn't very long. You see that plainly when you begin to look at it from the other end. Not time to do very much."