Quotes from Avram Davidson

What is cheaper than lust or of less value than alchemy or aphrodisiacs?

Well, well, sooner or later we shall come to that landmark in almost every Adventure, Pliny the Elder; and so here he is again, bitching as usual; but, as usual, telling us things of great interest.

Dragons have generally had a reputation for being anti-social. Liberals may attribute this to a deprived childhood, Conservatives to mere idleness: after all, is that a way to go through life, coiled around some tree?

when a couple of members of the Harvard faculty announced all the evidence, Jefferson said, "I would rather believe that two Yankee professors have lied than believe that stones fall from the sky.…" He was a great man. But here he is wrong.

Have I sufficiently confused you? Good. Stay humble.

Things oughtn't to be the way they are, altogether. But letting a madman burn down the barn is no way to improve them.

Where there is no bread, there is no philosophy.

were passed on to later generations in bowdlerized and abridged versions as stories for children. The same happened to Gulliver's Travels and to Moby Dick, to Robinson Crusoe, to—Children appreciate a good story. They don't enquire about symbolism or archetypes, and they never read critics.

This knowledge of the preservative qualities of honey, at a time when the sugar-cane was unknown in the western world, is no doubt responsible for the fact that the entire body of Alexander the Great was preserved in honey, and viewed by lots and lots of people, some of whom no doubt exclaimed, "Isn't he sweet!

Let us say in its favor that though it is nonsense, it is gorgeous nonsense, and it does not lead us down slow cold steps to worship a tyrant in his tomb; and that at least there have never been Unicorn Riots, Unicorn Wars, Unicorn Persecutions, Unicorn Plagues, Unicorn Famines. A scholar in his study studying unicorns will compass no one's death in the sacred names of Science and Technology. Perhaps we are where we are because we have no more unicorns. Onward.

But to get back to the moon, the moon! Ah, the moon! Farmers plant by it, fishermen fish by it, werewolves were by it, bartenders and orderlies in bughouses sigh and shiver at the thoughts of it …