Jack Vance Quotes

Adventure is just another name for having the daylights scared out of you and living to tell about it.

I can now report that the mathematics of the multiple focus are a most improbable thicket, and the useful service I enforced upon what I must call an absurd set of contradictions is one of my secrets. I know that thousands of scientists, at home and abroad, are attempting to duplicate my work; they are welcome to the effort. None will succeed. Why do I speak so positively? That is my other secret.

Certain folk have suggested bold and unprecedented methods—I might substitute the words ‘brash’ and ‘irresponsible’—to alter the conditions of today.

Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.

Art implies discipline; the more excellent the art, the more rigorous the discipline.

Your analyses at times border upon the mordant.

Your vision exceeds your practicality: often the case with a musician.

Another busy day! So let’s to business. The clock moves forward; wasted time is life defeated!

Madouc, this is my advice: pick up yonder clod of dirt, and tender it to that pop-eyed little imp, speaking these words: “Zocco, with this token I both imburse and reimburse you, in full fee and total account, now and then, anon and for ever, in this world and all others, and in every other conceivable respect, for each and every service you have performed for me or in my behalf, real or imaginary, to the limits of time, in all directions.”

“Well then, what of Adam Reith the erudite ethnologist? What theosophical insights can he contribute?”
“None,” said Reith. “Very few, at any rate. It occurs to me that the man and his religion are one and the same thing. The unknown exists. Each man projects on the blankness the shape of his own particular world-view. He endows his creation with his personal volitions and attitudes. The religious man stating his case is in essence explaining himself. When a fanatic is contradicted he feels a threat to his own existence; he reacts violently.”
“Interesting!” declared the fat merchant. “And the atheist?”
“He projects no image upon the blank whatever. The cosmic mysteries he accepts as things in themselves; he feels no need to hang a more or less human mask upon them. Otherwise, the correlation between a man and the shape into which he molds the unknown for greater ease of manipulation is exact.”

There’s ample human achievement in the universe, but not nearly enough beauty.

“I am a patriot. I wish to see my planet prosperous, waxing in wealth. I am a man imbued with the culture of my world; I can conceive of no better way of life, and I wish to see this culture expand, enriching itself with the cultures of other worlds, adapting the good, overcoming the bad.”
“In other words,” said Joe, “You’re as strenuous an imperialist as your military friends. Only your methods are different.”

Notice this rent in my garment; I am at a loss to explain its presence! I am even more puzzled by the existence of the universe.

The seconds marched past, traversing that mysterious boundary which separates future from past.

My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance.