Jack Vance
Award-winning science fiction and fantasy author, who wrote the four-book Dying Earth series.
You have frightened and daunted me. I will stop stealing at once. — Dhrun
Music is like a language: you cannot understand it unless you learn it, or more accurately, are born into it.
My fees are not too high. Your wage scale may simply be too low.
Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience. Otherwise they fall into desuetude and become unfashionable, unorthodox—finally irregulationary.
Consider the human mind! It is capable of amazing feats when used properly. Conversely, without exercise it atrophies to a lump of gray-yellow fat.
“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.”
"The folk are peculiar in many ways," said Erwig. "They preen themselves upon the gentility of their habits, yet they refuse to whitewash their hair, and they are slack in their religious observances. For instance, they make obeisance to Divine Wiulio with the right hand, not on the buttock, but on the abdomen, which we here consider a slipshod practice. What are your own views?"
"The rite should be conducted as you describe," said Cugel. "No other method carries weight."
Erwig refilled Cugel's glass. "I consider this an important endorsement of our views!"
I suspect that the word (art) was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.
Damned meddlers. It’s hard to know when their curiosity is official and when it’s just curiosity.
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.
Dismount and kneel before me, that I may strike off your head with fullest ease. You shall die in this tragic golden light of sunset. — Torqual
The purportedly free was seldom as represented.
"All is mutability, and thus your three hundred terces has fluctuated to three."
Kergan Banbeck threw up his hands, turned once more to the sacerdote. “How can I halt his nonsense? How can I make him see reason?
The sacerdote reflected. “He speaks not nonsense, but rather a language you fail to understand. You can make him understand your language by erasing all knowledge and training from his mind, and replacing it with patterns of your own.”
I am not a sensitive person, but these remarks carry a sting. — Sir Lulie
Control is necessary and even good—so long as I do the controlling.
And, stretching in languid warmth, she contrived to twist her body into first one luxurious position, then another.
"The contingency is remote." (This is also a Jeeves quote in the PG Wodehouse Novels)
I challenge Destiny, yes, but I do not leap off cliffs.
He was neither lazy nor incompetent; he merely had occupational claustrophobia.