Jack Vance Quotes
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He used a name for himself, true, but we played at Romance, and this is a game where truth is a bagatelle.
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The less a writer discusses his work-and himself-the better. The master chef slaughters no chickens in the dining room; the doctor writes prescriptions in Latin; the magician hides his hinges, mirrors, and trapdoors with the utmost care.
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Aillas groaned. 'Destiny could never be so unkind.'Suldrun said in a soft voice: 'Destiny doesn’t really care.'
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An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.
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Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.
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Excellent; all is well. The 'everlasting tedium' exactly countervenes the 'immediate onset of death' and I am left only with the 'canker' which, in the person of Firx, already afflicts me. One must use his wits in dealing with maledictions.
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I categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies.
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In the end, death came uniformly to all, and all extracted as much satisfaction from their dying as this essentially graceless process could afford.
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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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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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'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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'I am more inclined to punish Hurtiancz for his crassness,' said Ildefonse. 'But now he simulates a swinish stupidity to escape my anger.''Absolute falsity!' roared Hurtiancz. 'I simulate nothing!'Ildefonse shrugged. 'For all his deficiencies as polemicist and magician, Hurtiancz at least is candid.'
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I am not called Cugel the Clever for nothing.
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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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Die then. This is my cure for sore knees.
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And, stretching in languid warmth, she contrived to twist her body into first one luxurious position, then another.
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'Let him talk as he will!' scoffed Zamp. 'His motives are not at all obscure.'
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Of all questions, why? is the least pertinent. It begs the question; it assumes the larger part of its own response; to wit, that a sensible response exists.
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I have transcended that phase in my intellectual growth where I discover humour in simple freakishness. What exists is real; therefore it is tragic, since wherever lives must die. Only fantasy, the vapours rising from sheer nonsense, can now excite my laughter.
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If one basic axiom controls the cosmos, it must be this: In a situation of infinity every possible condition occurs, not once, but an infinite number of times.
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There was a writer in the '20s called Christopher Morley, who I remember a little bit of, who had some influence on me, but I couldn't tell you what it was.
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If the past is a house of many chambers, then the present is the most recent coat of paint.
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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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Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.