Michael Moorcock Quotes

Destiny’s Champion,
Fate’s fool.
Eternity’s Soldier,
Time’s Tool.

All Empires fall,
All ages die,
All strife shall be in vain.
All Kings go down,
All hope must fail,
But Tanelorn remains—
Our Tanelorn remains...

Here, I thought, I had found the human race in its final stages of decadence—perverse, insouciant, without ambition. And I could not blame them. After all, they had no future.

Nothing is known for certain, Isarda. All knowledge is illusion—purpose is a meaningless word, a mere sound, a reassuring fragment of melody in a cacophony of clashing chords. All is flux—matter is like these jewels. (She throws a handful of gleaming gems upon the golden surface; they scatter. When the last jewel has ceased to move, she looks up at him.) Sometimes they fall into a rough pattern, usually they do not. So as this moment, a pattern has been formed—you and I stand here speaking. But at any moment that which constitutes our beings may be scattered again.

The problems for which I could find no solution in fact had no solution.

There must be countless forms of love. Which is the form which conquers the rest? I cannot define it. I shall not try.

It’s getting late. I must return to my ship or my men will think I’ve drowned and be celebrating.

I stared at the water and saw the clouds reflected in it, saw them break to reveal the moon. It was the same moon I had known as John Daker. The same bland face could be made out staring down in contentment at the antics of the creatures of the planet it circled. How many disasters had that moon witnessed? How many foolish crusades? How many wars and battles and murders?

I felt sorry for him at that moment. He only wanted what every man wanted—freedom from fear, a chance to raise children with a reasonable certainty that they would be allowed to do the same, a chance to look forward to the future without the knowledge that any plans made might be wrecked forever by some sudden act of violence.

If the people at the top think that reaching for a gun will solve the problem, why shouldn’t the people at the bottom think the same?

To the fearful all things are chaotic. That’s how you get religion (and its bastard child, politics).

We can only be kind to one another," she said, "there is scarcely any alternative if we are to resist chaos.

Somewhere you can hear them whimpering, as if the evidence of their own mortality were emphasised by the knowledge of other people’s happiness.

Her face was now a mask of moral outrage. “You talk of fashion while I speak of morality.”
It was true that Jerry had never been able to see much of a difference between the two.

Time was the enemy of identity.