Man may trust man, Prince Elric, but perhaps we'll never have a truly sane world until men learn to trust mankind. That would mean the death of magic, I think.

Legends are best left as legends and attempts to make them real are rarely successful

It remains a mystery to me why some of that [pulp] fiction should be judged inferior to the rafts and rafts of bad social [literary] fiction which continues to be treated by literary editors as if it were somehow superior, or at least worthier of our attention. The careerist literary imperialism of the Bloomsbury years did a lot to produce fiction's present unseemly polarities.

Heroes betray us. By having them, in real life, we betray ourselves.

By means of our myths and legends we maintain a sense of what we are worth and who we are. Without them we should undoubtedly go mad.

There was no more dangerous kind of madman than one who devoted a good brain and a courageous heart to unhealthy ambitions.

And now, Elric had told three lies. The first concerned his cousin Yyrkoon. The second concerned the Black Sword. The third concerned Cymoril. And upon those three lies was Elric's destiny to be built, for it is only about things which concern us most profoundly that we lie clearly and with profound conviction.