Roger Zelazny Quotes

Life is full of doors that don't open when you knock, equally spaced amid those that open when don't want them to.

Beyond the River of the Blessed, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Avalon. Our swords were shattered in our hands and we hung our shields on the oak tree. The silver towers were fallen, into a sea of blood. How many miles to Avalon? None, I say, and all. The silver towers are fallen.

In a room the size of a ballroom the Pattern was laid. The floor was black and looked smooth as glass. And on the floor was the Pattern.
It shimmered like the cold fire that it was, quivered, made the whole
room seem somehow unsubstantial. It was an elaborate tracery of bright power, composed mainly of curves, though there were a few straight lines near its middle. It reminded me of a fantastically intricate, life-scale version of one of those maze things you do with a pencil (or ballpoint, as the case may be), to get you into or out of something. Like, I could almost see the
words “Start Here,” somewhere way to the back. It was perhaps a hundred
yards across at its narrow middle, and maybe a hundred and fifty long.
It made bells ring within my head, and then came the throbbing. My mind recoiled from the touch of it. But if I were a prince of Amber, then somewhere within my blood, my nervous system, my genes, this pattern was recorded somehow, so that I would respond properly, so that I could walk the
bloody thing.

I have noted, too, that when it comes to matters of security the laws are considerably relaxed.

"He never struck me as evil."
"Nor was he. His was the most dangerous morality of all. He was a misguided idealist."

Yes,” he said. “But I wonder . . . I’ve a peculiar feeling that I may never see you again. It is as if I were one of those minor characters in a melodrama who gets shuffled offstage without ever learning how things turn out.”

“I can appreciate the feeling,” I said. “My own role sometimes makes me want to strangle the author. But look at it this way: inside stories seldom live up to one’s expectations. Usually they are grubby little things, reducing down to the basest of motives when all is known. Conjectures and illusions are often the better possessions.

Oh, cynical monger of indulgences! ’Twould take a man of the cloth to work a scheme like that!

The garden of life never seems to confine itself to the plot philosophers have laid out for its convenience. Maybe a few more tractors would do the trick.

I wonder as to the value of consciousness,” said Jack, “if it does not change the nature of a beast.

Toward the bright stars, from the dark ground, he hurled another petition, for whatever it was worth.

Freedom of expression must also bow to the necessity for clear communication, as many of science fiction’s failed experiments of the sixties demonstrate.

The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown....To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three.

Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.

I wasn’t disappointed, inasmuch as I expected nothing.

Vishnu Vishnu Vishnu regarded regarded regarded Brahma Brahma Brahma...
They sat in the Hall of Mirrors.