Jack Vance Quotes

Jack Vance serves up witty, adventurous quips about war, change and power that will tickle a fan of bold storytelling.

63 quotes

1. 'Humanity is old, civilization is new: the mesh of cogs is by no means smooth and this is as it should be. Never should a man enter a building of glass or metal, or a spaceship, or a submarine, without a small shock of astonishment; never should he avoid an act of passion without a small sense of effort. We of the Institute receive an intensive historical inculcation; we know the men of the past, and we have projected dozens of possible future variations, which, without exception, are repulsive. Man, as he exists now, with all his faults and vices, a thousand gloriously irrational compromises between two thousand sterile absolutes is optimal. Or so it seems to us who are men.'

2. Cease the bickering! I am indulging the exotic whims of a beautiful princess and must not be distracted.

3. Grue: man, ocular bat, the unusual hoon.

4. Until work has reached its previous stage nympharium privileges are denied to all.

5. My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance.

6. My eye went to you like the nectar moth flits to jacynth.

7. Gid: hybrid of man, gargoyle, whorl, leaping insect.

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

9. She contrived to twist her body into first one luxurious position, then another.

10. I become drunk as circumstances dictate.

11. Am I known as Cugel the Clever for nothing?

12. All is mutability, and thus your three hundred terces has fluctuated to three.

13. We go to the image expander; there we will explode the ghost to the macroid dimension.

14. First you are swathed head to foot in the intestines of fresh killed owls.

15. The contingency is remote.

16. My talismans are not obviously useless.

17. At his elbow a voice said, 'I am Chun the Unavoidable.'

18. The creature displayed the qualities reminiscent of both coelenterate and echinoderm. A terrene nudibranch? A mollusc deprived of its shell? More importantly, was the creature edible?

19. Ah! Five hundred years I have toiled to entice this creature, despairing, doubting, brooding by night, yet never abandoning hope that my calculations were accurate and my great talisman cogent. Then, when finally it appears, you fall upon it for no other reason than to sate your repulsive gluttony!

20. The void in his mind athrob for the soothing pressure of knowledge.

21. Sixty bobbins: Blikdak was no more.

22. Are you ready for unorthodox procedures?

23. So now, be off! Or I inflict upon you the Spell of the Macroid Toe, whereupon the signalized member swells to the proportions of a house.

24. 'At Gundar we conceive 'innocence' as a positive quality, not merely an insipid absence of guilt,' stated the Nolde. - the Nolde Huruska, in 'The Seventeen Virgins' from Cugel's Saga

25. 'So then: onward to Lumarth, and let meticulous discretion be the slogan!' - Shimilko, in 'The Seventeen Virgins' from Cugel's Saga

26. 'The folk are peculiar in many ways,' said Erwig. 'They preen themselves upon the gentility of their habits, yet they refuse to whitewash their hair, and they are slack in their religious observances. For instance, they make obeisance to Divine Wiulio with the right hand, not on the buttock, but on the abdomen, which we here consider a slipshod practice.' in 'The Bagful of Dreams' from Cugel's Saga

27. 'What is all this commotion? Gookin, why do you lie among the cheeses?' Twango from Cugel's Saga

28. 'Excellent; all is well. The 'everlasting tedium' exactly countervenes the 'immediate onset of death' and I am left only with the 'canker' which, in the person of Firx, already afflicts me. One must use his wits in dealing with maledictions.' - Cugel

29. 'What are your fees?' inquired Guyal cautiously. 'I respond to three questions,' stated the augur. 'For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue.' - From 'Guyal of Sfere', The Dying Earth.

30. I also am of noble blood, or so it seems to me. - Orlo

31. A notable scheme has occurred to me. - Orlo

32. Naturally! That is the whole point of robbery: to acquire the victim's valuables! - Long Liam the Barber

33. You have frightened and daunted me. I will stop stealing at once. - Dhrun

34. It would not do if both of us became addled, and later woke up in doubt as to who was who. - Shimrod

35. Dango, Pume, Thwither: down with Visbhume's breeches; let him hold his backside at the ready. - King Throbius

36. Dismount and kneel before me, that I may strike off your head with fullest ease. You shall die in this tragic golden light of sunset. - Torqual

37. He lives among the far moons of Achernar, and he is accustomed to the most extreme outrages of terror and the hourly proximity of death. - Murgen

38. I am not a sensitive person, but these remarks carry a sting. - Sir Lulie

39. Zaxa rode a small pacing wole, and carried his fabulous sword Zil, while the others of the party rode steeds of other descriptions

40. Orthodoxy derives from this axiomatic foundation, and the two systems are mutually reinforcing: hence each is doubly validated.

41. Shimrod said: 'Once I thought of you as a child in a woman's body.' Melanchte smiled a cool smile. 'And now?' 'The child seems to have wandered away'.

42. 'I have transcended that phase in my intellectual growth where I discover humour in simple freakishness. What exists is real; therefore it is tragic, since whatever lives must die. Only fantasy, the vapors rising from sheer nonsense, can now excite my laughter.' - Lord Pirmence of Castle Lutez

43. Refrain (as sung by Mikelaus):

44. If religions are diseases of the human psyche, as the philosopher Grintholde asserts, then religious wars must be reckoned the resultant sores and cankers infecting the aggregate corpus of the human race. Of all wars, these are the most detestable, since they are waged for no tangible gain, but only to impose a set of arbitrary credos upon another's mind.

45. 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. To this end, a few words of pedantic exposition often prove invaluable.

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

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

48. Right now I'm so old that if I had a big gush of money, I don't know what I'd do with it. I don't travel anymore. I don't need anything, don't want anything. I'd give it to my son, I guess, and let him enjoy it.

49. This is no science, this is art, where equations fall away to elements like resolving chords, and where always prevails a symmetry either explicit or multiplex, but always of a crystalline serenity.

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

51. Nothing is more conspicuous than a farting princess.

52. The story was such that I couldn't make a graceful ending and then make a graceful new beginning. I could have, but I didn't want to. So, it isn't the most graceful way of writing a story. This new story is, I think, is pretty good stuff. I'm pleased with it anyway.

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

54. This flattery has been rather slow in coming. I think all of sudden late in life now I'm getting some credit for what I've done. Which is gratifying, but it's kind of a little late.

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

56. 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.

57. 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.

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

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

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

61. 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.

62. The less a writer discusses his work and himself the better. The master chef slaughters no chickens in the dining room; the doctor writes prescriptions in Latin; the magician hides his hinges, mirrors, and trapdoors with the utmost care.

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