Jack Vance Quotes

Dango, Pume, Thwither: down with Visbhume’s breeches; let him hold his backside at the ready.

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

He said that humanity in the main was crass, stupid, boorish and vulgar, and that I could learn at least this much from you.

Beauty compelled admiration and erotic yearning; such was its organic function. But never by itself could it command love.

“You drink only sparingly. Is the beer too thin?”
“No at all. I merely wish to keep my wits about me. It would not do if both of us became addled, and later woke up in doubt as to who was who.”

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.”

A single question remained, the age-old cry of anguish: “How could one so beautiful be so base?”

I have transcended that phase in my intellectual growth where I discover humour in simple freakishness. What exists is real; therefore it is tragic, since wherever lives must die. Only fantasy, the vapours rising from sheer nonsense, can now excite my laughter.

I gathered that the old fellow suffers from some advanced form of senile dementia, and so perhaps his analysis is not totally accurate.

Sir, my life, drab and insipid though it may seem to others, is the only life given me to live.

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!

You have frightened and daunted me. I will stop stealing at once.

“Sir Tristano spoke: “Stop! You are taking the great green pearl!”
“Naturally!” said the voice from a point close behind. “That is the whole point of robbery: to acquire the victim’s valuables!”

A notable scheme has occurred to me.

“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.”