Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic.

I do not care to listen; obloquy injures my self-esteem and I am skeptical of praise.

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.

Vance has a genius in evoking the beauty of strangeness, the strangeness of beauty.

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

Then there was Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote for Weird Tales and who had a wild imagination. He wasn't a very talented writer, but his imagination was wonderful.

A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone's written the story. He's supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment.