Communication and speech - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

If you would talk less nonsense, you would remember more sense.

- Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884)

In civilised life domestic hatred usually expresses itself by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper (the words are not offensive) but in such a voice, or at such a moment, that they are not far short of a blow in the face.

- C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (1942)

They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling, unable to communicate.

- William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954)

You can find out more about someone by talking than by listening.

- William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1959)

How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can't even understand one another?

- Stanislaw Lem, Solaris (1961), translated by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox (1970)

People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.

- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cat's Cradle (1963)

The universe must be full of voices, calling from star to star in a myriad tongues. One day we shall join that cosmic conversation.

- Arthur C. Clarke, ''To the Stars'' (1965)

It is not easy - talking to dragons.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore (1972)

Touch was a main channel of communication among the forest people. Among Terrans touch is always likely to imply threat, aggression, and so for them there is often nothing between the formal handshake and the sexual caress. All that blank was filled by the Athsheans with varied customs of touch.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''TheWord forWorld Is Forest'' (1972)

The Store's front steps and porch in summer, its stove in the softening winters, drew the lonely in their hunger for talk, that limping substitute for love.

- Edgar Pangborn, ''The Children's Crusade'' (1974)

Like other people they communicated as much with their bodies and hands as with speech.

- Vonda N. McIntyre, ''Aztecs'' (1977)

The poor Babel Fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

- Douglas Adams, ''Fit the First,'' episode of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series, 1978)

She was so graceful and supple in her movements, so deft at getting her meaning across. It was beautiful to watch her. It was speech and ballet at the same time.

- John Varley, ''The Persistence of Vision'' (1978)

Smell is the essence of communication. Look at that word essence itself.When you smell another human being, you take chemicals from his body into your own, analyze them, and from the analysis you accurately deduce his emotional state. You do it so constantly and so automatically that you are largely unconscious of it, and say simply, ''He seemed frightened,'' or ''He was angry.''

- GeneWolfe, ''Seven American Nights'' (1978)

On his way back to the lobby, his cigarettes forgotten, he had to walk the length of the ranked phones. Each rang in turn, but only once, as he passed.

- William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

Some problems are best let be, not chewed over with words. This modern compulsion to ''talk it out'' is a mistake at least as often as it is a solution.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Job: A Comedy of Justice (1984)

''It is true, then, what the villagers say,When a dead tree falls, it carries with it a live one.'' ''You speak too often with another's mouth.''

- Jane Yolen, ''TheWhite Babe'' (1987)

Most people don't listen. They use the time when someone else is speaking to think of what they're going to say next. True Listeners have always been revered among oral cultures, and prized for their rarity value.

- Terry Pratchett, Pyramids (1989)

The gods of the Disc have always been fascinated by humanity's incredible ability to say exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time.

- Terry Pratchett, Pyramids (1989)

People didn't understand that true intimacy did not consist of sexual intercourse, which could be done with strangers and in a state of total alienation; intimacy consisted of talking for hours about what was most important in one's life.

- Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (1992)

After so many years together it is not necessary for us to speak aloud to say much.

- Carrie Richerson, ''The City in Morning'' (1998)