Jack Vance famous quotes

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

#Men #Rope #Break

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.
-- Jack Vance

#Religious #War #Race

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

#Motivational #Risk #Privilege

Good music always defeats bad luck
-- Jack Vance

#Music #Luck #Defeat

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.
-- Jack Vance

#Adventure #Wine #Opportunity

I got done writing Ports of Call and suddenly realized I have far too much material for the book.
-- Jack Vance

#Book #Writing #Done

In fact, almost every job you get somebody watching you.
-- Jack Vance

#Jobs #Facts

I'd never been published when I was young.
-- Jack Vance

#Young

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.
-- Jack Vance

#Years #Half #Firsts

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

#Watches #Carpenter

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

#Airplane #Automobile

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

#Jobs #Inspection

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

#Writing

I never worked in an office in my life.
-- Jack Vance

#Office

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.
-- Jack Vance

#Men #Race #Victory

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

#Pain #Men #Evil

There are no absolute certainties in this universe. A man must try to whip order into a yelping pack of probabilities, and uniform success is impossible.
-- Jack Vance

#Men #Order #Trying

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.
-- Jack Vance

#Mind #Mouths #Shapes

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

#Art #Rate

Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.
-- Jack Vance

#Real #Boredom #Fugitive

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

#Organization #Ideas #World

Jack Vance's Lyonesse books are the greatest fairy tale of the twentieth century.
-- Jack Vance

#Book #Fairy Tale #Century

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

#Genius

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.
-- Jack Vance

#Men #Air #Eggs

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.
-- Jack Vance

#Stories #Environment #Reader

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

#Spiritual #Suffering #Rage

As I mentioned, I was a carpenter for a time.
-- Jack Vance

#Carpenter

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.
-- Jack Vance

#Challenges #Deception #Gauges

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.
-- Jack Vance

#Loss #Garments #Existence

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.
-- Jack Vance

#Answers #Tongue #Twenties

Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. —Popular aphorism.
-- Jack Vance

#Law #Enforcement #Aphorism

Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic.
-- Jack Vance

#Moving #Magic #Blast

Right now I'm so old that if I had a big gush of money, I don't know what I'd do with it. I don't travel anymore. I don't need anything, don't want anything. I'd give it to my son, I guess, and let him enjoy it.
-- Jack Vance

#Son #Giving #Want

The inscrutability [of economics] is perhaps not unintentional. It gives endless employment to dialecticians who otherwise might become public charges or, at very worst, swindlers and tricksters.
-- Jack Vance

#Giving #Employment #Might

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.
-- Jack Vance

#Assuming #Pertinent #Wit

I do read books. I suppose it's more or less the same thing, but at least I'm alone and I'm an individual. I can stop anytime I want, which I frequently do.
-- Jack Vance

#Book #Want #Individual

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.
-- Jack Vance

#Art #Fall #Serenity

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

#Gist #Said #Speculation

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

#Book #Reading #Reading Books

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

#Book #Influence #Enormous

You used the word "civilization", which means a set of abstractions, symbols, conventions. Experience tends to be vicarious; emotions are predigested and electrical; ideas become more real than things.
-- Jack Vance

#Real #Mean #Civilization

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

#Stars #War #Tickets

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

#Science #Fiction #Sake

I don't read other science fiction. I don't read any at all.
-- Jack Vance

#Science #Fiction #Science Fiction

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.
-- Jack Vance

#Writing #Computer #Speak

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

#Movie #Checks #Enormous

Then there was Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote for Weird Tales and who had a wild imagination. He wasn't a very talented writer, but his imagination was wonderful.
-- Jack Vance

#Imagination #Wonderful #Tales

I give dignity second place to expedience.
-- Jack Vance

#Giving #Dignity

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

#Apology #Criminals #Firsts

I must cite an intrinsic condition of the universe. We set forth in any direction which seems convenient; each leads to the same place: the end of the universe.
-- Jack Vance

#Citing #Ends #Universe

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

#Admiration #Function #Yearning

When you demand the nature of my motives, you reveal the style of your thinking to be callow, captious, superficial, craven, uncertain and impudent.
-- Jack Vance

#Thinking #Style #Demand

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.
-- Jack Vance

#Party #Balance #Realizing

Nothing is more conspicuous than a farting princess.
-- Jack Vance

#Princess

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.
-- Jack Vance

#Littles #Remember #Influence

Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.
-- Jack Vance

I do not care to listen; obloquy injures my self-esteem and I am skeptical of praise.
-- Jack Vance

#Self Esteem #Care #Praise

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

#Inches #Miles

Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.
-- Jack Vance

#Enemy

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.
-- Jack Vance

#Latin #Writing #Doctors

A barbarian is not aware that he is a barbarian.
-- Jack Vance

#Barbarians

If there were no such creatures as minstrel-maidens, it would be necessary to invent them.
-- Jack Vance

#Would Be #Maidens #Minstrels

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...
-- Jack Vance

#Real #Ease #Orthodoxy

In the end, death came uniformly to all, and all extracted as much satisfaction from their dying as this essentially graceless process could afford.
-- Jack Vance

#Dying #Satisfaction #Ends

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

#Long #Forever #Lasts

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

#Reality #Complaining #Useless

Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.
-- Jack Vance

#Writing #Thinking #Backgrounds