Jack Vance Quotes

They call me a renegade.
The epithet is inaccurate and undeserved. I cannot be faithless to a cause which I never have endorsed. Indeed, I am absolutely faithful to the only cause I espouse, which is my own welfare. I take pride in this unswerving loyalty!

“No,” said Travec, “religions, cults, rituals—forms of insanity—don’t interest me.”

Guyal reined his horse and reflected that flowers were rarely cherished by persons of hostile disposition.

My wealth is my shelf of books!

"The contingency is remote." (This is also a Jeeves quote in the PG Wodehouse Novels)

I must cite an intrinsic condition of the universe. We set forth in any direction which seems convenient; each leads to the same place: the end of the universe.

He must approach the subject critically, alert for contradictions, pedantry and vagueness.

“I admit to what may be an obtrusive curiosity.”
“The quality signifies an active mind,” said Reith.

Claghorn had long insisted that no human condition endured forever, with the corollary that the more complicated such a condition, the greater its susceptibility to change.

Cease the bickering! I am indulging the exotic whims of a beautiful princess and must not be distracted.

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

If religions are diseases of the human psyche, as the philosopher Grintholde asserts, then religious wars must be reckoned the resultant sores and cankers infecting the aggregate corpus of the human race. Of all wars, these are the most detestable, since they are waged for no tangible gain, but only to impose a set of arbitrary credos upon another’s mind.

I may be called upon to address the company. No one will listen, of course, which is just as well, since I have nothing to say.

Dismount and kneel before me, that I may strike off your head with fullest ease. You shall die in this tragic golden light of sunset.

Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic!