Jack Vance Quotes

In the end, death came uniformly to all, and all extracted as much satisfaction from their dying as this essentially graceless process could afford.

An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.

I'd never been published when I was young.

But I've sure worked at jobs where I have been under inspection.

The universe is eight billion years old, the last two billion of which have produced intelligent life. During this time not one hour of absolute equity has prevailed.

As I mentioned, I was a carpenter for a time.

I do read books. I suppose it's more or less the same thing, but at least I'm alone and I'm an individual. I can stop anytime I want, which I frequently do.

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.

Beauty is a luster which love bestows to guile the eye. Therefore it may be said that only when the brain is without love will the eye look and see no beauty.

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.

When you demand the nature of my motives, you reveal the style of your thinking to be callow, captious, superficial, craven, uncertain and impudent.

Somebody else's ignorance is bliss.

In fact, almost every job you get somebody watching you.

How to know, oh how to know! All is relative ease and facility in orthodoxy, yet how can it be denied that good is in itself undeniable? Absolutes are the most uncertain of all formulations, while the uncertainties are the most real.

Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.

I become drunk as circumstances dictate.

Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.

If there were no such creatures as minstrel-maidens, it would be necessary to invent them.

Why make plans? The sun might well go out tomorrow.

I don't read other science fiction. I don't read any at all.

It is useless, after all, to complain against inexorable reality.

Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience.

Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.

Notice this rent in my garment; I am at a loss to explain its presence! I am even more puzzled by the existence of the universe.

Jack Vance's Lyonesse books are the greatest fairy tale of the twentieth century.

I know that the history of man is not his technical triumphs, his kills, his victories. It is a composite, a mosaic of a trillion pieces, the account of each man's accommodation with his conscience. This is the true history of the race.

Right now I'm so old that if I had a big gush of money, I don't know what I'd do with it. I don't travel anymore. I don't need anything, don't want anything. I'd give it to my son, I guess, and let him enjoy it.

I understand the gist of your speculation,' said Rhialto. 'It is most likely nuncupatory.

This is no science, this is art, where equations fall away to elements like resolving chords, and where always prevails a symmetry either explicit or multiplex, but always of a crystalline serenity.

I never worked in an office in my life.

What are your fees?" inquired Guyal cautiously. "I respond to three questions," stated the augur. "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue.

Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.

There are no absolute certainties in this universe. A man must try to whip order into a yelping pack of probabilities, and uniform success is impossible.

I give dignity second place to expedience.

The life we've been leading couldn't last forever. It's a wonder it lasted as long as it did.

I suspect that the word (art) was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.

Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. —Popular aphorism.

But I'm so slow on it because I find it terribly hard writing blind on computers. The computer speaks to me, but it's just so slow, I'm so terribly slow using it.

If religions are diseases of the human psyche, as the philosopher Grintholde asserts, then religious wars must be reckoned the resultant sores and cankers infecting the aggregate corpus of the human race. Of all wars, these are the most detestable, since they are waged for no tangible gain, but only to impose a set of arbitrary credos upon another's mind.

The inscrutability [of economics] is perhaps not unintentional. It gives endless employment to dialecticians who otherwise might become public charges or, at very worst, swindlers and tricksters.

I categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies.

I was an omnivore at reading, so that everything I ever read contributed.

Good music always defeats bad luck

A man is like a rope: both break at a definite strain....The solution is not splicing the rope; it's lessening the tension.

I haven't sold to the movies. In other words, I haven't gotten any enormous checks yet.

I thought that automobiles were going to have mufflers and go fast and airplanes were going to fly fast.

Nothing is more conspicuous than a farting princess.

But, for instance, when I was awfully young, I read all the Oz books. They were an enormous influence on me.