Keith Laumer Quotes

The Third Era had recognized the impossibility of correcting the effects of human interference with more human interference.

Adventure has been defined as somebody else having a difficult time, a long way away. (p. 17)

Strange—I go along for months at a time—even years—without so much as a mild concussion—and then bam—slam—bash! They start using my head for a practice dummy. That’s how I can tell that I’m having an adventure.

“Impossible!” he said, as if he believed it—or as if he wanted awfully badly to believe it.

Him and his pet dragon—
"More folklore, I take it?"
"Well, I never actually seen this dragon."
"Hmmm. Funny how nobody I've met has seen it, but they all believe in it."

It was a nasty little village, poverty-stricken, ugly, hostile, much like little towns in all times and climes.

Most taboos have to do with eating, sex, elimination or gods; so remember, look before you sit down, lie down, squat down or kneel down!

An idea was beginning to get through, and he wasn’t liking it very well.

The Karg looked at her with the interested expression of a coroner who sees his customer twitch.

Are you sure you’re really the Devil and not someone else with the same name?

Man clings to his self-orientation at the psychological center of the Universe. You can face any challenge within that framework, suffer any loss, endure any hardship—so long as the structure remains intact.

The last burst picked me up and threw me a thousand miles into an open grave and the mud showered down on me and a giant tombstone fell out of the sky to mark the place, but I didn’t care any more, because I was far away, in that place where the heroes and the cowards lie together with a fine impartiality, waiting for eternity to pass, slowly, like a procession of snails creeping across an endless desert toward a distant line of mountains. (p. 18)

Are you all right? Mellia said.
"It's nothing a month in the intensive care unit wouldn't clear up."

All right. Let's begin with the world situation.
"I'd prefer a more cheerful subject—like cancer."

Lucifer hurried on. “But I assure you that most of what you’ve heard is grossly exaggerated. That is to say, I’m not really as bad as all that. I mean, there are different kinds of er, badness. There is the real evil, and then there’s sin. I’m, ah, associated with sin.”
“The distinction seems a subtle one, Mr., ah, Lucifer—”
“Not really, professor. We all sense instinctively what true evil is. Sin is merely statutory evil—things that are regarded as wrong simply because there’s a rule against them. Like, ah, smoking cigarettes and drinking liquor and going to movies on Sunday, or wearing lipstick and silk hose, or eating pork, or swatting flies—depending on which set of rules you’re going by. They’re corollary to ritual virtues such as lighting candles or spinning prayer wheels or wearing out-of-date styles.”
Dimpleby leaned back and steepled his fingers. “Hmmm. Whereas genuine evil…?”
“Murder, violence, lying, cheating, theft,” Lucifer enumerated. “Sin, on the other hand, essentially includes anything that looks like it might be fun.”
“Come to think of it, I’ve never heard anything in praise of fun from the anti-sin people,” Curl said thoughtfully.
“Nor from any ecclesiastic with a good head for fund-raising,” Dimpleby concluded.
“It’s all due to human laziness, I’m afraid,” Lucifer said sadly. “It seems so much easier and more convenient to observe a few ritual prohibitions than to actually give up normal business practices.”