Michael Moorcock Quotes

The book trade invented literary prizes to stimulate sales, not to reward merit.

Americans need bullshit the way koala bears need eucalyptus leaves. They've become totally addicted to it. They get so much of it back home that they can't survive without it.

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.

Elric knew that everything that existed had its opposite. In danger he might find peace. And yet, of course, in peace there was danger. Being an imperfect creature in an imperfect world he would always know paradox. And that was why in paradox there was always a kind of truth. That was why philosophers and soothsayers flourished. In a perfect world there would be no place for them. In an imperfect world the mysteries were always without solution and that was why there was always a great choice of solutions.

The Lords of Chaos are the enemies of Logic, the jugglers of Truth, the molders of Beauty

Because I had sought to challenge Destiny, Destiny had taken vengeance.

When gods die, self-respect buds', murmured Orland Fank. 'Gods and their examples are not needed by those who respect themselves and, consequently, respect others. Gods are for children, for little, fearful people, for those who would have no responsibility to themselves or their fellows.

Destiny's Champion, Fate's fool. Eternity's Soldier, Time's Tool.

I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I'd rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas.

Doomed Lord's Passing. For the mind of man alone is free to explore the lofty vastness of the cosmic infinite, to transcend ordinary consciousness, to roam the secret corridors of the brain where past and future melt into one...And universe and individual are linked, the one mirrored in the other, and each contains the other.

It is almost impossible to have a baseless snobbish opinion of the General Theory of Relativity.

Treasures are not won by care and forethought but by swift slaying and reckless attack.

Trapped. Sinking. Can't be myself. Made into what other people expect. Is that everyone's fate? Were the great individualists the products of their friends who wanted a great individualist as a friend?

Arthuriana has become a genre in itself, more like TV soap opera where people think they know the characters. All that's fair enough, but it does remove the mythic power of the feminine and masculine principles. So I prefer it in its original form, even if you have to wade through Mallory's 'Le Morte d'Arthur' - people smashing people for pages and pages! It still has the resonances of myth about it, which makes it work for me. I don't want to know if Mordred led an unhappy childhood or not.

What happened to fantasy for me is what also happened to rock and roll. It found a common denominator for making maximum money. As a result, it lost its tensions, its anger, its edginess and turned into one big cup of cocoa.

The subtlest lie of all is the full truth.

Introduce your main characters and themes in the first third of your novel. If you are writing a plot-driven genre novel make sure all your major themes/plot elements are introduced in the first third, which you can call the introduction. Develop your themes and characters in your second third, the development. Resolve your themes, mysteries and so on in the final third, the resolution.

It is only about things which concern us most profoundly that we lie clearly and with profound conviction.

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.

The past is a script we are constantly rewriting.

Is the prisoner a prisoner because he lives in a cage or because he knows that he lives in a cage?

It's History that's caused all the troubles in the past.

I know not which I prefer the look of—those who attack us or that which defends us!

All Empires fall, All ages die, All strife shall be in vain. All Kings go down, All hope must fail, But Tanelorn remains Our Tanelorn remains.

It's getting late. I must return to my ship or my men will think I've drowned and be celebrating.

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.

Here, I thought, I had found the human race in its final stages of decadence perverse, insouciant, without ambition. And I could not blame them. After all, they had no future.

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

The problems for which I could find no solution in fact had no solution.

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.

And you, Prince Elric? She attracted the albino's wandering attention. Do you know his story? Elric shook his head. I only know, he said, that he is a shape-changer and, that most cursed of souls, a person of rare goodness and sanity. Imagine such torment as is his!

Our scientific advances will be merely obscene unless they help the large part of our world's population emerge from miserable uncertainty and debilitating terror.

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

Everything means nothing that is the only truth.

Time is the enemy of identity

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

If the people at the top think that reaching for a gun will solve the problem, why shouldn't the people at the bottom think the same?

What the local politicians actually meant was that they hoped to claim the land in the name of the public and then make the usual profits privatizing it. There was a principle at stake. They had to ensure their friends and not outsiders got the benefit.