Jack Vance Quotes

Jaro, my dear, there is no mystery about violence. It is the reflexive act of brutes, boors and moral defectives.

“What are the motives which prompt men to new enterprises? First, money, which in a sense comprises, includes, all of the other motives too. But for the sake of clarity, call this first, the desire for money, and end in itself. Second, there’s the will for power. Subdivide that last into, say, the crusading instinct and call it a desire for unlimited sexual opportunity. Power over women. Then third, curiosity, the desire to know. Fourth, the enterprise for its own sake, as a diversion. Like a millionaire’s race horses. Fifth, philanthropy. Any more?”
“Covers it,” said Zaer.

My point is this: no outsider can effectively organize a group of experts; they must organize themselves.

A single question remained, the age-old cry of anguish: “How could one so beautiful be so base?”

Where cowards never venture, heroes find splendor.

They meant no harm, of course; they wanted only that he be like themselves, which was the prerogative of all parents.

A man without friends is a tree without leaves.

He indicated the pair of grotesques. "For instance, I have seldom seen objects so studiously repulsive as this pair of bibelots. Skillfully done, agreed! Notice the detail in these horrid little ears! The snouts, the fangs: the malignance is almost real! Still, they are undeniably the work of a diseased imagination." The objects reared erect. One of them spoke in a rasping voice: "No doubt Cugel has good reason for his unkind words; still, neither Gark nor I can take them lightly."

Here was the milieu he loved: 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.

“As I listen to you I hear only ingenuousness and didactic theory.”
Lorcas compressed his lips. “Perhaps because you are hearing views which contradict your emotions.”

Sacerdotal, religious or priest-dominated societies are like organisms with a cancer.

And I understand they are, in a sense, artists? That is to say, they understand the creative process, the sublimation of fact to symbol and the use of symbol to suggest emotion?

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

When one deals with the Murthe, the unthinkable becomes the ordinary, and Zanzel's repute carries no more weight than last year's mouse-dropping - if that much.

“Tomorrow?”
“Sh.” She put her hand across his lips. “Never say the word!”