Keith Laumer Quotes

Yours is not to reason why, eh? I guess you’re lucky at that. It’s not dying that hurts—it’s living.

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

I say, old man, you're developing something of a persecution complex, I'm afraid—
"That's easy, when you're persecuted."

I’m arguing with myself and I can’t tell who’s winning.

There’s nothing like a little slavery to make a man appreciate even a modest portion of freedom.

Rules had been made, and even enforced from time to time. When the first absolute prohibition of time meddling came along, it was already far too late.

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

M-magic? Lafayette stuttered.
"Nonsense. Electronics."

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)

I know it’s hard to grasp at first. I seem to recall I was a bit difficult to convince once. We are accustomed to thinking we know everything. There’s a powerful tendency to just disbelieve anything that doesn’t fit the preconception.

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

Just what is your position here?
"I'm an adviser to his Majesty." Nicodaeus smiled blandly. "He thinks I'm a master of magic, of course, but among these feather-heads a little common sense is sufficient to earn one a reputation as a wise man."

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

Less than total control is no control at all. You will obey my instructions, Mr. Ravel. In every detail. Or I will scrap the project.

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.