Jack Vance Quotes

“While we were gone someone broke into my case and stole most of my things.”
The news seemed to drive Skorlet close to the limits of self-control. “And what do you expect?” she snapped in an unpleasantly harsh voice. “This is an egalistic country; why should you have more than anyone else?”
“I have been over-egalized,” said Jantiff drily. “To the effect that I now have less than anyone else.”

“I have heard your name mentioned.”
“Probably as a high-flying free-wheeling financial hell-raiser.”
“I believe the term ‘unscrupulous blackguard’ was used,” said Ridolph.

“You have not accepted my advice.”
Fair shrugged. “You asked me to remain ignorant, to accept my stupidity and ineptitude.”

“Are you yourself a Christian?”
The young man made a negative sign. “The concepts of religion baffle me.”
“This inscrutability is perhaps not unintentional,” said the ex-priest. “It gives endless employment to dialecticians who otherwise might become public charges or, at very worst, swindlers and tricksters.”

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

"I therefore suggest that in the style of the previous examples, a natural scientist, examining a single atom might well be able to asseverate the structure and history of the entire universe!"
"Bah!" muttered Hurtiancz. "By the same token, a sensible man need listen to but a single word in order to recognize the whole for egregious nonsense."

“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.”

By an axiom of cultural anthropology, the more isolated a community, the more idiosyncratic become its customs and conventions. This of course is not necessarily disadvantageous.

I am a legalist and a financial expert, I admit as much; but my disregard for the law goes no further.

“I’m not sure. There’s not much I can do. Unless—” he hesitated.
“Unless what?”
“Unless I make an underwater survey myself.”
Damon was appalled. “What do you hope to gain by that?”
Fletcher smiled. “If I knew, I wouldn’t need to go.”

“I was trained in the old tradition! We found our strength in the basic verities, to which you, as a patrician, must surely subscribe. Am I right in this?”
“Absolutely, and in all respects!” declared Cugel. “Recognizing, of course, that these fundamental verities vary from region to region, and even from person to person.”

Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.

Ifness pursed his lips judiciously. “All folk, mercantilists as well as tavern-keepers and musicians, try to relate their work to abstract universals. We mercantilists are highly sensitive to theft, which stabs at our very essence. To steal is to acquire goods by a simple, informal, and inexpensive process. To buy identical goods is tedious, irksome, and costly. Is it any wonder that larceny is popular? Nonetheless it voids the mercantilist’s reasons for being alive; we regard thieves with the same abhorrence that musicians might feel for a fanatic gang which beat bells and gongs whenever musicians played.”
Frolitz stifled an ejaculation.
Ifness tasted the mug of green cider which Loy had set before him. “To repeat: when a thief steals property he steals life. For a mercantilist I am tolerant of human weakness, and I would not react vigorously to the theft of a day. I would resent the theft of a week; I would kill the thief who stole a year of my life.”

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

It was right and proper to exploit the excellences of the moment, but still, when conditions reached an apex, there was nowhere to go but down.