“I think that I will not answer that question,” he said at last. “I would create as many false images as there were ears to hear me.” “Half as many,”… - Jack Vance

I have much to say about the world, but every year the compulsion dwindles. Let them live and die; it is all one to me.

Here was the milieu he loved: conversation! Supple sentences, with first and second meanings and overtones beyond, outrageous challenges with cleverly planned slip-points, rebuttals of elegant brevity; deceptions and guiles, patient explanations of the obvious, fleeting allusions to the unthinkable. As a preliminary, the conversationalist must gauge the mood, the intelligence, and the verbal facility of the company.

It is foolish to be outraged by a fact of nature.