Jack Vance Quotes

Of all questions, why? is the least pertinent. It begs the question; it assumes the larger part of its own response; to wit, that a sensible response exists.

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.

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.

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

Good music always defeats bad luck

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

While we are alive we should sit among colored lights and taste good wines, and discuss our adventures in far places; when we are dead, the opportunity is past.

What is an evil man? The man is evil who coerces obedience to his private ends, destroys beauty, produces pain, extinguishes life.

I was a carpenter for a time and everybody watches what you do.

A barbarian is not aware that he is a barbarian.

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

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

Nothing is more conspicuous than a farting princess.

The less a writer discusses his work and himself the better. The master chef slaughters no chickens in the dining room; the doctor writes prescriptions in Latin; the magician hides his hinges, mirrors, and trapdoors with the utmost care.

Beauty compelled admiration and erotic yearning; such was its organic function. But never by itself could it command love.

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.

I haven't been to a movie since somebody gave me free tickets to Star Wars, which I went to.

What is peace? Balance three iron skewers tip to tip, one upon the other; at the summit, emplace and egg, so that it too poises static in mid-air, and there you have the condition of peace in this world of men.

The void is a mouth crying to be filled, a blank mind aching for thought, a cavity desperate for shape. What is not implies what is.

Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.

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

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

Conversation! Supple sentences, with first and second meanings and overtones beyond, outrageous challenges with cleverly planned slip-points, rebuttals of elegant brevity; deceptions and guiles, patient explanations of the obvious, fleeting allusions to the unthinkable. As a preliminary, the conversationalist must gauge the mood, the intelligence and the verbal facility of the company. To this end, a few words of pedantic exposition often prove invaluable.

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

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

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.

I give dignity second place to expedience.

Truth" is contained in the preconceptions of him who seeks to define it. Any organization of ideas whatever presupposes a judgment on the world.

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

Somebody else's ignorance is bliss.

I become drunk as circumstances dictate.

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

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.

But Roy Rockwood, it was science fiction for the sake of science fiction.

I worked for half a cent a word. I'm not a fast writer to begin with, so for the first few years I had do other things.

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

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

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.

I'd never been published when I was young.

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

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

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

I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell.

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

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 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.

I suffer from a spiritual malaise which manifests itself in outbursts of vicious rage.

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

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.

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.