Marion Zimmer Bradley Quotes

You have the Barbarian viewpoint, I see. Radio, for instance. We use it for emergency needs. The Barbarians used to listen to keep from doing things—I know, they even had radio with pictures, and used to sit and listen and look at other people doing things instead of doing them themselves.

The trouble is, we’ve all gotten out of the habit of connecting pregnancy and sex, we all have a civilized attitude about it now.

Every human being needs to believe in the goodness of some power that created him, no matter what he calls it, and some religious or ethical structure. But I don’t think we need sacraments or priesthoods from a world that’s only a memory, and won’t even be that to our children and our children’s children. Ethics, yes. Art, yes. Music, crafts, knowledge, humanity—yes. But not rituals which will quickly dwindle down into superstitions. And certainly not a social code or a set of purely arbitrary behavioral attitudes which have nothing to do with the society we are in now.

To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom," Viviane said. "Then, when you begin to learn, you will not have to forget all the things you think you know.

Our world is rotten, but I’ve no confidence that the new world will be better!

Good Lord, what's that unholy racket!"
"I forgot you weren't a Scot, darling, don't you like the bagpipes?

A trail without beginning has no end.

If you can’t be inconspicuous, be so damned conspicuous that nobody can miss you. And that in itself is a fair concealment. How many people can accurately describe a street riot?

Lancelet said, “And I must believe that man has the power to know the right, to choose between good and evil and know that his choice has made a difference…”

Anyone who intrigues for power, deserves to get it!

It was a long season of mourning and there were times when I wondered if I should mourn all my life and never again be free of it; but at last I could remember without weeping, and recall the days of love without unending sorrow welling up like tears from the very depths of my being. There is no sorrow like the memory of love and the knowledge that it is gone forever; even in dreams, I never saw again his face, and though I longed for it, I came at last to see that it was just as well, lest I live all the rest of my life in dreams…but at last there came a day when I could look back and know that the time for mourning was ended. (Morgaine)

Often, in writing, granting the basic skill of writing a literate English sentence—which can no longer be taken for granted even in college graduates—all it takes is determination.

My love for you is a prayer, she thought. Love is the only prayer I know. She thought she had never loved him so much as at this moment, when she heard the convent door close, hard and final, and felt the wall shutting her in. (Gwenhwyfar).

Science fiction encourages us to explore... all the futures, good and bad, that the human mind can envision.

"Only men laugh, only men dance, only men weep" - Saying on Darkover, quoted by Lew Alton