Roger Zelazny Quotes

Within the theater Agony on the stage of Delirium in the heat-lightning lit landscape of Night and Dream there go upon the boards the memories that never were, compounded of that which was and that which is not, that which is and that which can never be, informed with fleeting or lingering passions, sexless or sexful, profound or absurd, seldom remembered, sometimes coherent, beautiful, ugly, or mundane upon experience, generally inane in reflection, strangely sad or happy, colorfully dark or darkly light, and this is about all that can be said of them, save that the spark which ignites them, too, is unknown.

"So I simply said one of the great trite truths: "There is generally more than one side to a story.

Knowledge was what he needed. Fear was what he had.

Oh, I don't know — that's a hell of a question — I don't tend to look at my stuff that way. I just look at it a book at a time. Something like the Amber books are in a different class. I try not to anticipate. I don't know what I'll be writing a few years from now. I have some ideas — I have lots of different things I want to try. I almost don't really care what history thinks. I like the way I'm being treated right now.

"Are you going to do it?" he asked. "Maybe," I said.
Don't 'maybe' me, baby. It's written all over you. I'd almost be willing to go along, you know. Of all my relations, I like sex the best and Eric the least."
I lit a cigarette, while I considered."

"You are one of the few successful persons I know."
"Me? Why?"
"You know precisely what you are doing and you do it well."
"But I don't really do much of anything."
"And of course the quantity means nothing to you, nor the weight others place upon your actions. In my eyes, that makes you a success."
"By not giving a damn? But I do, you know."
"Of course you do, of course you do! But it is a matter of style, an awareness of choice — "

While I had often said that I wanted to die in bed, what I really meant was that in my old age I wanted to be stepped on by an elephant while making love.

As for the rest of him, his function is rather like that of an anti-computer: you feed him all kinds of carefully garnered facts, figures, and statistics and he translates them into garbage.

Добре. Още един ден и ние продължаваме да сме живи. Може дори мъничко бяхме помъдрели. Достатъчно, за да осъзнаем, че все още съществуват много неща, които трябва да научим. Да не губим надежда. Това е то.

We talked the moon out of heavens before either of us grew tired.

Nothing is cheaper than past glories.

I feel obligated to point out, though, that I have always been a sucker for ideas I find aesthetically pleasing. The cosmic sweep of the thing - an interstellar kula chain - affirming the differences and at the same time emphasizing the similarities of all the intelligent races in the galaxy - tying them together, building common traditions... The notion strikes me as kind of fine.

I loved him like a brother - which is to say, not at all.

"Do you work for the government, any government?”
"I pay taxes, which means I work for the government, part of the time. Yes.

At one time, tips were given only for things you logically would want to have done efficiently and promptly, and they served to supplement a lower payscale for certain classes of employment. This was understood, accepted. It was tourism, back in the century of my birth, cluing in the underdeveloped countries to the fact that all tourists are marks, that set the precedent, which then spread to all countries, even back to the tourists’ own, of the benefits which might be gained by those who wear uniforms and render the undesired and the unrequested with a smile. This is the army that conquered the world. After their quiet revolution in the twentieth century, we all became tourists the minute we set foot outside our front doors, second-class citizens, to be ruthlessly exploited by the smiling legions who had taken over, slyly, completely.