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Quotes from Plan for Chaos — John Wyndham

1903–1969 England

← All quotes by John Wyndham

15 quotes

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

Plan for Chaos (2009)

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

Plan for Chaos (2009)

To sleep in peace, and resume a nightmare when one wakes, is a highly undesirable reversal of the natural order.

Plan for Chaos (2009)

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

Plan for Chaos (2009)

It's all pretty simple if you don't give a damn who gets hurt in the rush.

Plan for Chaos (2009)

"Dying," observed the doctor, "is such a very ordinary thing to do."

Plan for Chaos (2009)

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.

Plan for Chaos (2009)

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

Plan for Chaos (2009)

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.

Plan for Chaos (2009)

One man's trash is another's souvenir.

Plan for Chaos (2009)

"Was she a bit mad?"
"Mad? Oh, no - unless you would call a failure to grow up a kind of madness - in which case there would be very few sane people."

Plan for Chaos (2009)

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.

Plan for Chaos (2009)

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...

Plan for Chaos (2009)

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.

Plan for Chaos (2009)

"I see death as the worm's opportunity. It is defeat. You can dress it as you like, with drama, or glory, or pomposity, and perhaps deceive yourself for the critical moment - but, nevertheless, the same worm comes - it is defeat..."

Plan for Chaos (2009)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Wyndham (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.