alien perspective Quotes

Billy Pilgrim says that the Universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creatures from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti. And Tralfamadorians don't see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millepedes - "with babies' legs at one end and old people's legs at the other," says Billy Pilgrim.

Maybe this world is another planet's hell.

A Separation is another film that I think is extraordinary, and one of those things that feels like it's from another planet, much like Terrence Malick's movies did: at a certain point, you feel like he's an alien from another planet telling us and looking at us and showing us how we are. I also really, really love Jerry McGuire.

In my planet, fashion, I'm the only straight man.

If there's anyone in space, what they'll learn about the human race will be listening to us talking on the car phone.

You watch people and study them the way an alien would.

They call soccer the beautiful game, but if I had to identify just one sport to show members of some alien species what the human race is all about, I'd nominate squash.

The thing I don't understand is why so often one hears discussion of the fruits of human labor as if it's all the creation of some alien race.

I had at one point this rather depressing image of some alien culture seeing the death of this planet - coming down in their spaceships and sniffing around; finding all our skeletons sitting around our TV sets and trying to work out why our end came before its time and they come to the conclusion that we amused ourselves to death.

I’m very much down to earth, just not this earth.

Fifteen years was a long time to be stranded anywhere, particularly somewhere as mind-boggingly dull as Earth.

If I hadn’t spent so much time studying Earthlings," said the Tralfamadorian, "I wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by 'free will.' I've visited thirty-one inhabited planets in the universe, and I have studied reports on one hundred more. Only on Earth is there any talk of free will.

I'm an author who likes assignments, who needs suggestions, ideas I would never have thought of otherwise - then something happens inside my alien head. Other people have to decide whether or not I'm a good writer, but I do have the ability to write in different styles.

Do you remember how you felt at seventeen? I do and I don't (...) Imagine you came from outer space and someone showed you a butterfly and a caterpillar. Would you ever put the two of them together? That's me and my memories.

I don't know how it is for you earthlings, but where I'm from, strength is mental.

Writing is an act of empathy. You are occupying and understanding a point of view that might be alien to your own--and work is often the keyhole through which you peer.

I never read the scripts at all carefully and never wanted to know what was going on, because i felt that being a benevolent alien, that's the way it should be.

If aliens are watching us through telescopes, they're going to think the dogs are the leaders of the planet. If you see two life forms, one of them's making a poop, the other one's carrying it for him, who would you assume is in charge?

It could be that these other civilizations, if they are far more advanced intellectually than we are, would not even measure our existence as a blip on the intelligence radar. They could be so advanced that we are to them what worms are to us.

To have knowledge of Judaism and to be a religious Jew or an interested Jew, is to have a doorway into a worldview that is entirely alien to the rest of the world's worldview.

If I was an alien looking down at Earth and studying the way we've treated the planet, would I really think humans are worthy of all these resources? Probably not.

If an alien with an accounting degree touched down in America, it might conclude that we're a weird cult that spends 11 months living frugally and four crazy weeks buying tons of stuff we don't need. It wouldn't be entirely wrong, either.

In any case, the leading edge of our "on purpose" radio signals is 30 light-years away and, if intercepted, may mend the aliens' image of us based on the radio bubble of our television shows. But this will happen only if the aliens can somehow determine which type of signal comes closer to the truth of who we are, and what our cosmic identity deserves to be.

If an alien visited Earth, they would take some note of humans, but probably spend most of their time trying to understand the dominant form of life on our planet - microorganisms like bacteria and viruses.

By now you know: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, "Take me to your leaders." Even I--unused to your ways though I am--would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings among us, made of cogs, pieces of paper, small disks of shiny metal, scraps of coloured cloth. I do not need to encounter more of them. Instead I will say, "Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths." These are worth it. These are what I have come for.