Jack Vance Quotes

"At Gundar we conceive 'innocence' as a positive quality, not merely an insipid absence of guilt," stated the Nolde. "We are not the fools that certain untidy ruffians might suppose."

“I think that I will not answer that question,” he said at last. “I would create as many false images as there were ears to hear me.”
“Half as many,” Clissum pointed out delicately.

“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.”

“Is this the conduct of a ‘sly and unpredictable villain’?”
“Decidedly so, if the villain, for the purposes of his joke, thinks to simulate the altruist.”
“Then how will you know villain from altruist?”
Cugel shrugged. “It is not an important distinction.”

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.

"I distrusted him from the start! Still, who could imagine such protean depravity?" Bunderwal, the supercargo, concurred. "Cugel, while plausible, nonetheless is a bit of a scoundrel."

I challenge Destiny, yes, but I do not leap off cliffs.

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."

All is mutability, and thus your three hundred terces has fluctuated to three.

The purportedly free was seldom as represented.

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.

"Here you see the pattern from which my great work is derived. It expresses the symbolic significance of NULLITY to which TOTALITY must necessarily attach itself, by Kratinjae's Second Law of Cryptorrhoid Affinities, with which you are possibly familiar."
"Not in every aspect," said Cugel.

There can be no doubt as to the facts as I have stated them. Orthodoxy derives from this axiomatic foundation, and the two systems are mutually reinforcing: hence each is doubly validated.

I categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies.

Ah! Five hundred years I have toiled to entice this creature, despairing, doubting, brooding by night, yet never abandoning hope that my calculations were accurate and my great talisman cogent. Then, when finally it appears, you fall upon it for no other reason than to sate your repulsive gluttony!