Fritz Leiber Quotes

Bored and insecure men will loose arrows at dust motes.

Aye, there’s the bitter core of all freedom: no pay!

“So tell me, giant philosopher, why we’re not dukes,” the Gray Mouser demanded, unrolling a forefinger from the fist on his knee so that it pointed across the brazier at Fafhrd. “Or emperors, for that matter, or demigods.”
“We are not dukes because we’re no man’s man,” Fafhrd replied smugly, setting his shoulders against the stone horse-trough. “Even the duke must butter up a king, and demigods the gods. We butter no one. We so our own way, choosing our own adventures—and our own follies! Better freedom and a chilly road than a warm hearth and servitude.”
“There speaks the hound turned out by his last master and not yet found new boots to slaver on,” the Mouser retorted with comradely sardonic impudence.

The Devourers want to brood about their great service to the many universes—it is their claim that servile customers make the most obedient subjects for the gods.

The Devourers want not only the patronage of all beings in all universes, but—doubtless because they are afraid someone will some day raise the ever-unpleasant question of the true worth of things—they want all their customers reduced to a state of slavish and submissive suggestibility, so that they are fit for nothing whatever but to gawk at and buy the trash the Devourers offer for sale.

Girls had a way of blotting out all lesser, but not thereby despicable, delights. Girls were for dessert.

They, like many priests, had been much too fanatical and not nearly as clever as the god they served.

Too much good luck was always dangerous.

“What’s the use of knowing the name of a skull? One would never have occasion to talk of it,” said the fat thief loudly. “What interests me is that it has rubies for eyes.”

Unlike men, rubies and emeralds do not rest quietly in their graves.

Let fools seek it. They shall win it not. For although my treasure house be empty as air, no deadly creature in rocky lair, no sentinel outside anywhere, no pitfall, poison, trap, or snare, above and below the whole place bare, of demon or devil not a hair, no serpent lethal-fanged yet fair, no skull with mortal eye a-glare, yet have I left a guardian there. Let the wise read this riddle and forbear.

Thieves and astrologers moved restlessly in their sleep, sensing that the hours of night and work were drawing near.

“Oaths are made to be kept only until their purpose be fulfilled,” the fluty voice responded. “Every geas is lifted at last, every self-set rule repealed. Otherwise orderliness in life becomes a limitation to growth; discipline, chains; integrity, bondage and evil-doing.”

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

Revenge is empty. It cannot bring back the dead.