Jack Vance
Award-winning science fiction and fantasy author, who wrote the four-book Dying Earth series.
I do not care to listen; obloquy injures my self-esteem and I am skeptical of praise.
“The crime,” said the Jacynth softly, “is abstract and fundamental: the innate depravity of extinguishing life.”
Your doctrines are remarkable! As if I existed only to fulfill your cravings! Then, since I do not care to do so, the cosmos must be considered insane.
It would not do if both of us became addled, and later woke up in doubt as to who was who. — Shimrod
Naturally! That is the whole point of robbery: to acquire the victim's valuables! — Long Liam the Barber
His brain ached with the want of knowing.
If there were no such creatures as minstrel-maidens, it would be necessary to invent them.
Guyal reined his horse and reflected that flowers were rarely cherished by persons of hostile disposition.
He lives among the far moons of Achernar, and he is accustomed to the most extreme outrages of terror and the hourly proximity of death. — Murgen
A notable scheme has occurred to me. — Orlo
Your thoughts move with the deft precision of worm-tracks in the mud.
Ah! Five hundred years I have toiled to entice this creature, despairing, doubting, brooding by night, yet never abandoning hope that my calculations were accurate and my great talisman cogent. Then, when finally it appears, you fall upon it for no other reason than to sate your repulsive gluttony!
I categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies.
A barbarian is not aware that he is a barbarian.
“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.”
Yes, I realize that I see but a semblance, but so do you, and who is to say which is real?
Man had dominated the Earth by virtue of a single assumption: that an effect could be traced to a cause, itself the effect of a previous cause. Manipulation of this basic law yielded rich results; there seemed no need for any other tool or instrumentality. Man congratulated himself on his generalized structure. He could live on desert, on plain or ice, in forest or in city; Nature had not shaped him to a special environment.
I give dignity second place to expedience.
A man is like a rope: both break at a definite strain....The solution is not splicing the rope; it’s lessening the tension.
"A natural scientist, examining a single atom, might well be able to asserevate the structure and history of the entire universe!"