Jack Vance Quotes
-
'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.'
-
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.
-
These are just the tip of the iceberg, because I read and read and read. I read everything.
-
I categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies.
-
I suspect that the word (art) was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.
-
'I would define ‘avarice’ as a consequence of the human estate: a condition arising from turbulence and inequality. In none of the paradises, where conditions are no doubt optimum, does ‘avarice’ exert force. Here, we are men struggling toward perfection and ‘avarice’ is a station along the way.'
-
Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic!
-
Kings, like children, tend to be opportunistic. Generosity only spoils them. They equate affability with weakness and hasten to exploit it.
-
The mind was a marvellous instrument, thought Shimrod; when left to wander untended, it often arrived at curious destinations.
-
But, for instance, when I was awfully young, I read all the Oz books. They were an enormous influence on me.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Dismount and kneel before me, that I may strike off your head with fullest ease. You shall die in this tragic golden light of sunset.
-
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.
-
I gathered that the old fellow suffers from some advanced form of senile dementia, and so perhaps his analysis is not totally accurate.
-
So I'll write it, and then I'll find out that I actually wrote something that is utterly useless. You can't use it in the story and it doesn't fit. So I just throw it away. I've done that countless times.
-
He used a name for himself, true, but we played at Romance, and this is a game where truth is a bagatelle.
-
I give dignity second place to expedience.
-
They call me a renegade.The epithet is inaccurate and undeserved. I cannot be faithless to a cause which I never have endorsed. Indeed, I am absolutely faithful to the only cause I espouse, which is my own welfare. I take pride in this unswerving loyalty!
-
Dango, Pume, Thwither: down with Visbhume’s breeches; let him hold his backside at the ready.
-
The history of man is a compendium of such evil. We are an evolutionary product, descendants of predators. A few synthetic foods aside, every morsel eaten by man is taken from another living thing. We are intended for murder; we kill to exist!
-
'I think that I will not answer that question,' he said at last. 'I would create as many false images as there were ears to hear me.''Half as many,' Clissum pointed out delicately.
-
'Let him talk as he will!' scoffed Zamp. 'His motives are not at all obscure.'
-
Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.