R. A. Lafferty Quotes

Stilicho first talked of himself; and then of the Empire, which was an extension of himself. He gave it as his studied and honest opinion that he was the best horseman in the world, the best archer and targeteer, the best lancer, and that he had been the best swordsman; one cannot remain the best with the sword without spending six to eight hours a day in the practice of it. Stilicho attested that he was the greatest foot soldier alive, being able to cover afoot seventy Roman miles over rough country between midnight and midnight under the full weight of arms and provisions — about a hundred pounds in modern weight. Stilicho could endure hunger and thirst and privation beyond all others; he could plan and project more than could another man; he could hold every detail of a countryside in his head, and could recall the underfoot stones of a night path a dozen years later. He could see the pattern of affairs and the pattern behind the pattern.
Stilicho spoke of himself without vainglory, and certainly without modesty. He acknowledged that it was unusual for one man so to excel in everything; but was happy that that one person should be such a responsible person as himself. He gave the opinion that even in himself it would be a short-term affair. Soon his hand and his mind would weaken a little, and soon another man — probably one of them — would move into his place. A dozen years, he told them, is an extreme limit of the time in which a man may serve faultlessly

His soaring vaunt escaped the blooming ears of us, He's gone, he's dead, he's dirt, he disappears from us! Be this the death of highest thrust of human all? The flaming end of bright and shining crewmen all? Destroyed? His road is run? It's but a bend of it; Make no mistake, this only seems

Pottscamp felt nothing; he was, of course, a machine without feeling. He had no conscience or compassion. This would not bother him at all.
It wouldn’t?
Then why did he-?
Then why did he-WHAT?
Sat on the ground and moaned and howled like an old Hebrew. And poured dust and ashes over his head.
You’re crazy. He really did that?
He really did that.

Do you not know that the underground lands are shared by many worlds? It is all one underground, a vast place, and it is but a trick on which globe one will surface on coming out. This is the reason that the inside of every world is so much vaster than the outside. You are fooled by the shape of these little balls on which things live and crawl; you see the universe inside out; you see the orbs as containing and not contained. I will teach you to see it right if you please me.

When we build excellences into human persons, Victor, we do not build up or upon. We build down, which is another way of saying that we refine. We cut down. We carve out. We sculpt.’
‘From what stones do we sculpt, Swing? Is it from the ‘Magnificent Blanks’ that you sometimes speak of?’
‘Yes, and there are such things, though you all smile at such statements from me as though I were concealing something behind a fanciful notion. There were even some Magnificent Blanks on this world once. The Cro-Magnons were such, and most of the people still carry some of their blood. The essence of the ‘Magnificents’ is that they should be large-brained and long-lived and vigorous; and that they should have a certain style, which is the same thing as grace, or as power-in-balance. And the essence of the ‘Blanks’ is a sort of hairy invisibility, a condition in which nobody will look at them twice, in which nobody will pluck or plunder them before their time.

Dr. Ginochio Gyves would have been the first man on the moon except for a trifling error of navigation. He lands. He sees a wild landscape, small pseudo-horses, and little brown people. But they are little Mexican people and little Mexican donkeys or burros, and he is in Mexico rather than on the moon. I always get those two places confused myself.

Paul was coursing at fantastic speed towards the area where the little twin stars Rhium and Antirhium revolved around each other. “Hurry,” were his instructions; “they seem of no consequence, but they are the governor of the universe. Somebody is tampering with them.” Paul continued at his impossible speed and arrived at the area. He saw something that nobody had ever seen before, for nobody had ever been so close to them. The two small stars that revolved around each other were, joined together by a long steel chain. It was that which held them in their tight rapid orbits; it was that which made them the governor of the universe. Paul quickly located the trouble. There was a small green creature, with the body of .a monkey and the head of a gargoyle, cutting the chain with a hack-saw, and he had it near cut in two. “Pray that I be not too late!”
Paul prayed, and he believed he had made it when the sawyer-broke a blade. But he quickly replaced it with another, stuck his green tongue out at Paul, took three more strokes with the hack-saw, and the chain broke. Then Rhium and Antirhium swung out of their tight orbits, and the whole universe was out of control with its governor broken. Fifty billion billion stars went nova, and then blacked out to nothing. The universe had eaten itself and was gone forever. “I told you to hurry!” the space captain told Paul furiously as he came barreling up. Then the space captain’s face melted like wax and he was gone. “I did hurry,” Paul said. Then his own face melted like wax and he was gone also.
“Is it quite finished?” came the voice of old hawk-face Fabian Foreman. “If it is quite finished, then perhaps we can begin to construct a new universe. It’s all right. It worked out well. I meant you to be too late.

Q: Didn't you mention somewhere that you were writing poetry before you were writing stories?

RAL: I was, but I didn't consider that commercial. Of course I have used a lot of those since then as chapter heads, and little verses I have scattered in. In fact I have used up all the good
ones.

We have run out of tricks, but the people haven't run out of expecting tricks.

But time heals all wounds. That is a proverb, an untrue proverb. There wounds unhealed by time enough to fill every lazare from the beginning. All time can do is to give a little time, to achieve composure, to make a mask. You build it out of textured wax, and if you are skilful it looks just like your face, just like your face will look ten years from now. But it doesn’t fit right. You never saw one that fit right.

But the world goes on. That’s another thing that people say. It doesn’t. It jolts a little bit and bumps; and then it comes to a stop. The scenery unrolls backwards and gives the impression that the world goes on. Bit it does not go.

There was supervised recreation. This is the original contradiction of terms. It was for making suggestions about supervised recreation that the devil was cast into hell; any other account you have heard is false.

Aye, a man’d be a fool to lose his head twice over the same thing,” Thomas mused, still looking more than half stubborn. “Of course I’ll sign.”
“He’d have to feel himself a little better than those around him to take up a challenge like that,” Foreman put in hurriedly as Thomas had already touched magnetic stylus to the form.
“He’d have to be a man of some pride.”
“I am a man of some pride,” Thomas said. “I do feel myself a little better than those around me, now that I really look at them.”
“He’d have to be a man who couldn’t be pushed and couldn’t be scared,” said Foreman.
“I say I’m such a man, even if it’s a lie. But I scare a little,” Thomas said.
“He’d have to be a man who’d stand his ground even if he were scared,” Foreman needled.
“He’d have to be quite a man to die for a point, even if he understood it only at the last minute, and then dimly. He’d have to be such a man-“
“Foreman, you fool, what are you up to?” Proctor demanded.
“Who pushed me into the corner the other time, Fabian?” Thomas asked softly. “Who required my head of me for his point?”
“If you’re granted another life, Thomas, you try to figure it out. Will he be writ as friend or enemy of you, do you think? On which side did he seem?

Now then, I have given you a short fair hearing as the law requires. I do not solicit the support of your party, though, in all honesty, if it had more than one member I might.

The devils stroll the earth again and infect with the red sickness. They must, at all cost to themselves, destroy the growing tendrils before such can touch the other side. For, whenever one least growing creeper touches across the interval, that means the extinction of a devil. It is a thing to be tested. Notice it that whenever there is the special shrilling, when there is the wild flinging out of catchwords to catch you in, when there are the weird exceptions and inclusions, when there are specious arguments and the murderous defamations, when all the volubility of the voltairians and the cuteness of the queers has been assembled to confound you, then one green growth has almost reached across to the other side, one devil is in danger of extinction. Oh, they will defend against that!

If you have come with high expectations of anything, you have come to the wrong place.