Fritz Leiber Quotes

"Excuse me, Gaspard,” Flaxman interjected, “but would you mind turning the emotional down and the factual up?”

That’s what everybody’s been looking for since the Year One—something a little more than sex.

I am up to date only sporadically. I live firmly in the world of art, where reality and fantasy are one.

It was the laughter of the Elder Gods observing their creature man and noting their omissions, miscalculations and mistakes.

Now is a bearable burden. What buckles the back is the added weight of the past’s mistakes and the future’s fears.

I’ll have to learn to snowshoe. I had my first lesson this morning and cut a ludicrous figure. I’ll be virtually a prisoner until I learn my way around. But any price is worth paying to get away from the thought-destroying din and soul-killing routine of the city!

The greater the variety of intelligent life Don saw, the more he became sensitive to its presence.

We have searched the wide world over and not found forgetfulness.

“There are some things man was not meant to know,” the Mouser said in a most portentous voice. Then, swiftly switching to the familiar, “or rather, since I am in no way superstitious, there are some things that have not yet yielded to our philosophy.”

The idea of brutality actually shocks him, thought Goniface amusedly. I wonder what name he has for the toil we exact of the commoners, and the penances we impose on them?

I realized that wherever she came from, whatever shaped her, she’s the quintessence of the horror behind the bright billboard. She’s the smile that tricks you into throwing away your money and your life. She’s the eyes that lead you on and on, and then show you death. She’s the creature you give everything for and never really get. She’s the being that takes everything you’ve got and gives nothing in return. When you yearn towards her face on the billboards, remember that. She’s the lure. She’s the bait. She’s the Girl.

Yes, indeed, he assured himself rapidly, things did seem to be working around to a grand payoff in the great game of trading heroic feats for intimate maidenly favors that all heroes lived or at least hoped by, no matter how disordered and irregular the bookkeeping.

Old legends said Death had a skinny sister denominated Pain, passionately devoted to the loathsome torture that often was Death’s prelude.

And the mighty are great worriers and spend much time preventing anything that troubles their peace of mind.

That is as far from the truth as I am from the Secret of the Sphinx.