Jack Vance Quotes
-
He used a name for himself, true, but we played at Romance, and this is a game where truth is a bagatelle.
-
These are just the tip of the iceberg, because I read and read and read. I read everything.
-
'Truth' is contained in the preconceptions of him who seeks to define it. Any organization of ideas whatever presupposes a judgment on the world.
-
I gathered that the old fellow suffers from some advanced form of senile dementia, and so perhaps his analysis is not totally accurate.
-
'Here you see the pattern from which my great work is derived. It expresses the symbolic significance of NULLITY to which TOTALITY must necessarily attach itself, by Kratinjae's Second Law of Cryptorrhoid Affinities, with which you are possibly familiar.' <br.> 'Not in every aspect,' said Cugel.
-
'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.'
-
I do not care to listen; obloquy injures my self-esteem and I am skeptical of praise.
-
'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.'
-
I suspect that the word (art) was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.
-
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 challenge Destiny, yes, but I do not leap off cliffs.
-
I still feel that we should act with restraint. It’s much easier not to do than to undo.
-
'When one deals with the Murthe, the unthinkable becomes the ordinary, and Zanzel's repute carries no more weight than last year's mouse-dropping - if that much.'
-
'You drink only sparingly. Is the beer too thin?''No at all. I merely wish to keep my wits about me. It would not do if both of us became addled, and later woke up in doubt as to who was who.'
-
'Enter, my friend, enter. How goes your trade?''In all candor, not too well,' said Cugel. 'I am both perplexed and disappointed, for my talismans are not obviously useless.'
-
'My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance.'
-
And, stretching in languid warmth, she contrived to twist her body into first one luxurious position, then another.
-
I must cite an intrinsic condition of the universe. We set forth in any direction which seems convenient; each leads to the same place: the end of the universe.
-
'You’re sure you want to look into these cognates? You might see things you wouldn’t like.''So long as I know the truth, I don’t care whether I like it or not.'
-
'If ambush I must, then ambush I will,' Aillas muttered to himself. 'A fig for chivalry, at least until the war is won.'
-
He’s like an imbecile with a pepper shaker; a little makes his food taste good, therefore a lot will make it wonderful.
-
The purportedly free was seldom as represented.
-
And I understand they are, in a sense, artists? That is to say, they understand the creative process, the sublimation of fact to symbol and the use of symbol to suggest emotion?
-
Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.