Fritz Leiber Quotes

Devils may be nothing but beings intent on their purpose, which now happens to collide with yours.

They’ve heard about space but they still don’t believe in it. They haven’t been out here to see for themselves that there isn’t any giant elephant under the earth, holding it up, and a giant tortoise holding up the elephant. If I say “planet” and “spaceship” to them, they still think “horoscope” and “flying saucer”.

There was always something new to be seen in the unchanging night sky.

It was always worth everything to get away by himself, climb a bit, and study the heavens.

I abominate any organization that denies cats are people!

To Space-Age man, every mystery is a greed-magnet.

“How like humans,” he said drily. “The universe is vast, majestic, intricate, patterned with inexhaustible beauty, vivid with infinitely varied life—and there’s only one thing in it that really interests you. The same thing that makes you buy books, build families, create atomic theories (I imagine) or, once upon a time, write poetry. Sex.”

Their feeble attempts to appear concerned only made them look to him more like two fat cats full of stolen cream and with a map of the secret tunnel leading to the meat locker tucked inside their fur vests.

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

Humans aren’t as you idealized them, Blanda. Humans are dream-killers. They took the bubbles out of soapsuds, Blanda, and called it detergent. They took the moonlight out of romance and called it sex.

For that matter, where did I get off being critical of anyone?

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

Of course, if you assume a big enough conspiracy, you can explain anything, including the cosmos itself.

Poets are wiser than anyone because they’re the only people who have the guts to think and feel at the same time.

Sometimes I wonder if our memories are as good as we think they are and if the whole past wasn’t once entirely different from anything we remember, and we’ve forgotten that we forgot.