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'Sir Tristano spoke: 'Stop! You are taking the great green pearl!''Naturally!' said the voice from a point close behind. 'That is the whole point of robbery: to acquire the victim’s valuables!'
Jack Vance
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'Down we go,' said Paddy. 'Now pray to Saint Anthony if you be a good Catholic-''I'm not,' snapped Fay, 'and if you'll give more mind to the boat and less to religion we’ll gain by it.'
Jack Vance
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And, stretching in languid warmth, she contrived to twist her body into first one luxurious position, then another.
Jack Vance
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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.
Jack Vance
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I gathered that the old fellow suffers from some advanced form of senile dementia, and so perhaps his analysis is not totally accurate.
Jack Vance
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I am not called Cugel the Clever for nothing.
Jack Vance
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'Let him talk as he will!' scoffed Zamp. 'His motives are not at all obscure.'
Jack Vance
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Cease the bickering! I am indulging the exotic whims of a beautiful princess and must not be distracted.
Jack Vance
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I give dignity second place to expedience.
Jack Vance
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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.
Jack Vance
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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.
Jack Vance
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Aillas groaned. 'Destiny could never be so unkind.'Suldrun said in a soft voice: 'Destiny doesn’t really care.'
Jack Vance
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Aillas replied that while King Audry cited several points of technical interest, and used the resources of abstract logic in an adroit manner, he had actually made no connection with reality.
Jack Vance
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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.'
Jack Vance
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We’ll rack our brains and either solve your problem or come up come up with new and better ones.
Jack Vance
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If the past is a house of many chambers, then the present is the most recent coat of paint.
Jack Vance
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A barbarian is not aware that he is a barbarian.
Jack Vance
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Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.
Jack Vance
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Shimrod said: 'Once I thought of you as a child in a woman’s body.'Melancthe smiled a cool smile. 'And now?''The child seems to have wandered away.'
Jack Vance
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'I'm sure you didn’t mean to hurt anyone.'Madoc Roswyn laughed a soft forlorn laugh. 'The sad truth is that I didn’t care-which may be worse.'
Jack Vance
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He adjudicated the case in a manner I still find perplexing, but which must have been equitable, since it pleased no one.
Jack Vance
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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.
Jack Vance
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The colour, noise and festivity failed to elevate Carfilhiot’s mood; in fact-so he told himself-never had he witnessed so much pointless nonsense.
Jack Vance
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Who is seducing whom? If we are working to the same ends, there is no need for so many cross-purposes.
Jack Vance
