Jack Vance Quotes

American mystery and speculative fiction writer (1916–2013)

John Holbrook Vance (August 28, 1916 – May 26, 2013) was an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author, who wrote the four-book Dying Earth series.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pen Names: Ellery Queen • Alan Wade • Peter Held • John van See • Jay Kavanse

Birth Name: John Holbrook Vance

Alternative Names: John H. Vance

From Wikidata (CC0)

Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.

Ildefonse said ponderously: "If your analysis is correct, we must undertake to secure the future against this pangynic nightmare."

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

“Tell me, then! What is so important?”
“Your life! I could not bear that you should lose it!”
“I feel much the same. Say on.”

One thing was certain: when someone searched into secret places, he often came up with things he would rather not have found.

Your character, Apollon Zamp, is marred by a certain paltriness of spirit, a diffused universal distrust which I truly deplore.

Sorry, I’m not at home. I have gone out to my world Fancy, and I cannot be reached. Call back in a week, unless your business is urgent, in which case call back in a month.

Shimrod said: “Once I thought of you as a child in a woman’s body.”
Melancthe smiled a cool smile. “And now?”
“The child seems to have wandered away.”

“I learned a great deal,” said Beran. “And then I lost all heart for further learning.”
Palafox’s eyes glinted. “Education is not achieved through the heart—it is a systematization of the mental processes.”
“But I am something other than a mental process,” said Beran. “I am a man. I must reckon with the whole of myself.”

The big man’s scowl deepened. “You’re not what I expected.”
“Intelligence, facility, resourcefulness are not like neckties, to be displayed as ornaments,” Magnus Ridolph pointed out.

Damned meddlers. It’s hard to know when their curiosity is official and when it’s just curiosity.

We need no chieftain; such folk eat more than their share.

The words must be spoken. The thoughts must be thought. The plans must be planned. The deeds must be done.

The Rhune is not a likable man. He is so sensitive as to be truculent; he is contemptuous of all other races than the Rhune. He is self-centered, arrogant, unsympathetic in his judgments.

Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience. Otherwise they fall into desuetude and become unfashionable, unorthodox—finally irregulationary.

“Anacho, my friend,” said Reith, “you have a great deal to learn. The process will come as an appalling shock to you.”