Jack Vance Quotes

Of all questions, why? is the least pertinent. It begs the question; it assumes the larger part of its own response; to wit, that a sensible response exists.

Human interactions, stimulated as they are by disequilibrium, never achieve balance. In even the most favorable transaction, one party whether he realizes it or not must always come out the worse.

Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience.

Good music always defeats bad luck

But I've sure worked at jobs where I have been under inspection.

While we are alive we should sit among colored lights and taste good wines, and discuss our adventures in far places; when we are dead, the opportunity is past.

What is an evil man? The man is evil who coerces obedience to his private ends, destroys beauty, produces pain, extinguishes life.

I was a carpenter for a time and everybody watches what you do.

A barbarian is not aware that he is a barbarian.

I understand the gist of your speculation,' said Rhialto. 'It is most likely nuncupatory.

A man is like a rope: both break at a definite strain....The solution is not splicing the rope; it's lessening the tension.

Nothing is more conspicuous than a farting princess.

Beauty compelled admiration and erotic yearning; such was its organic function. But never by itself could it command love.

Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.

Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.

I haven't sold to the movies. In other words, I haven't gotten any enormous checks yet.

The void is a mouth crying to be filled, a blank mind aching for thought, a cavity desperate for shape. What is not implies what is.

I suspect that the word (art) was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.

I haven't been to a movie since somebody gave me free tickets to Star Wars, which I went to.

As I mentioned, I was a carpenter for a time.

But I'm so slow on it because I find it terribly hard writing blind on computers. The computer speaks to me, but it's just so slow, I'm so terribly slow using it.

I thought that automobiles were going to have mufflers and go fast and airplanes were going to fly fast.

I worked for half a cent a word. I'm not a fast writer to begin with, so for the first few years I had do other things.

Somebody else's ignorance is bliss.

But Roy Rockwood, it was science fiction for the sake of science fiction.

Truth" is contained in the preconceptions of him who seeks to define it. Any organization of ideas whatever presupposes a judgment on the world.

I give dignity second place to expedience.

I become drunk as circumstances dictate.

But, for instance, when I was awfully young, I read all the Oz books. They were an enormous influence on me.

There was a writer in the '20s called Christopher Morley, who I remember a little bit of, who had some influence on me, but I couldn't tell you what it was.

Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.

I'd never been published when I was young.

I was an omnivore at reading, so that everything I ever read contributed.

An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.

I categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies.

A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone's written the story. He's supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment.

I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell.

Vance has a genius in evoking the beauty of strangeness, the strangeness of beauty.

It is useless, after all, to complain against inexorable reality.

Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. —Popular aphorism.

Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.

In the end, death came uniformly to all, and all extracted as much satisfaction from their dying as this essentially graceless process could afford.

The universe is eight billion years old, the last two billion of which have produced intelligent life. During this time not one hour of absolute equity has prevailed.

If there were no such creatures as minstrel-maidens, it would be necessary to invent them.

Beauty is a luster which love bestows to guile the eye. Therefore it may be said that only when the brain is without love will the eye look and see no beauty.

Jack Vance's Lyonesse books are the greatest fairy tale of the twentieth century.

I must cite an intrinsic condition of the universe. We set forth in any direction which seems convenient; each leads to the same place: the end of the universe.

When you demand the nature of my motives, you reveal the style of your thinking to be callow, captious, superficial, craven, uncertain and impudent.

Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic.

I got done writing Ports of Call and suddenly realized I have far too much material for the book.