Jack Vance Quotes
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What is peace? Balance three iron skewers tip to tip, one upon the other; at the summit, emplace and egg, so that it too poises static in mid-air, and there you have the condition of peace in this world of men.
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'Now it seems that Roger has once more taken up with Miss Roswyn. I can’t say that I approve, but he has not troubled to ask my advice.' She heaved a sigh. 'But I am sure that the world will never go precisely to my liking.''Does it for anyone?' asked Bernard Bickel with good-natured cynicism.'Probably not, and I must reconcile myself to the fact.'
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It was right and proper to exploit the excellences of the moment, but still, when conditions reached an apex, there was nowhere to go but down.
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The creature displayed the qualities reminiscent of both coelenterate and echinoderm. A terrene nudibranch? A mollusc deprived of its shell? More importantly, was the creature edible?
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Your doctrines are remarkable! As if I existed only to fulfill your cravings! Then, since I do not care to do so, the cosmos must be considered insane.
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Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.
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Your character, Apollon Zamp, is marred by a certain paltriness of spirit, a diffused universal distrust which I truly deplore.
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Sir, my life, drab and insipid though it may seem to others, is the only life given me to live.
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These are just the tip of the iceberg, because I read and read and read. I read everything.
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Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.
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Speaking our language, you will understand us-and if you can think as another man thinks, you cannot dislike him.
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'A natural scientist, examining a single atom, might well be able to asseverate the structure and history of the entire universe!'Bah!' muttered Hurtiancz. 'By the same token, a sensible man need listen to but a single word in order to recognize the whole for egregious nonsense.'
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It had been suggested to her that the flaw lay not in the universe but in herself.
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When you demand the nature of my motives, you reveal the style of your thinking to be callow, captious, superficial, craven, uncertain and impudent.
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Gassoon, for all his lore, subscribed to a common fallacy: he assumed that all those whom he encountered appraised him in the same terms as he did himself.
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I was a carpenter for a time and everybody watches what you do.
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What a strange and unfamiliar world if everyone were treated according to his deserts!
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But, for instance, when I was awfully young, I read all the Oz books. They were an enormous influence on me.
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'Why not alter the habits of a lifetime and speak with candour?' asked Shimrod. 'Truth, after all, need not be only the tactic of last resort.'
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Until work has reached its previous stage nympharium privileges are denied to all.
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He looked around the landscape. Drenched in the golden haze of late afternoon it seemed wonderfully tranquil and beautiful, though permeated with a sense of remoteness and even melancholy, like a scene remembered from one’s youth.
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Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic!
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Human interactions, stimulated as they are by disequilibrium, never achieve balance. In even the most favorable transaction, one party-whether he realizes it or not-must always come out the worse.
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'It is simple dog-eat-dog,' said Waylock. It’s basic battle for survival, fiercer and more brutal than ever before in the history of man. You have blinded yourself; you subscribe to false theories; you are permeated with your obsession-not only you but all of us. If we faced the facts of existence, our palliatories would be less crowded.'