Quotes from Roger Zelazny

I was as hard as stone, dark as soil, and mean as hell once more.

My mother and my mother's mother were born in a place where time does not run as in Amber. I am the first of my mother's line to bear all the marks of humanity.

I can see through Shadow, Corwin.

Would I see everything stripped of meaning, form, content, life, when things had been pushed to a kind of completion?

No two authors can render the same story in the same fashion.

In the mirrors of the many judgments, my hands are the color of blood. I am part of the evil that exists in the world and in Shadow. I sometimes fancy myself an evil that exists to oppose other evils.

things sort of equal to equal things sort of being equal to each other, it didn't much seem to matter.

And sweets to the sweet, I replied, then spoke the word that completed the spell, dropping a load of manure upon him.

Corwin," he stated then, "it pleases me more than I can say to see you die not knowing something that means that much for you.

The red bird, the Jewel bearer, born of my blood from my father's hand, had returned to defend me.

The great burning blossom squats, flowing, upon the limb of the world, excreting the ash of the world, and being none of these things I have named and at the same time all of them, and this is reality, the Nameless.

And then everything swam away on dark currents to the places where dreams dwell when they are not being used. . . .

How long will you plague me, brother? How far must I go to bring it to an end between us?

You've no objection to a bird of ill omen, following you, have you, Corwin?

I've been waiting for you since the beginning of Time, Corwin." "Must have been a bit tiresome.

My sense of Shadow was dulled in this place which seemed in some way the essence of Shadow.

Few people can say of themselves that they are free of the belief that this world which they see around them is in reality the work of their own imagination. Are we pleased with it, proud of it, then?

I turned to a smiling Ganelon, his beard and wild hair molten in a merciless light.

I had been wandering, looking for something novel, something that suited my fancy. I came upon that place at that time in the same way we find anything. I let my desires lead me and I followed my instincts.

Il volto quasi familiare diventa un fenomeno comune in una società affollata ed in un continuo movimento. Penso talvolta che sia proprio ciò che in ultima analisi rimane di noi: schemi di lineamenti, alcuni un po' più persistenti degli altri, impressi sullo scorrere dei volti. (Il Boia torna a casa)

I could not tell whether it was a double or you playing games. The third possibility did cross my mind, though-that you had duelled in some adjacent area of Shadow for a sufficient time to cast shadows of yourself.

All of my life I have had a tendency to overreact to things. It seems to run in my family. But I do not want to be like the others. They made a lot of trouble for themselves that way. The full-scale, all-or-nothing reaction may be all right if you always win, but that way also lies high tragedy or at least opera if you happen to be up against something extraordinary.

You people are such an infertile lot that paternity seems to hit you much harder than it does others. Look at Random. For years he had disowned his son, and now-I've a feeling he'd risk his life for him.

Don't know why I should have to lie beside anyone I wouldn't want next to me now, and there aren't many." "You're getting morbid, Corwin. Or drunk. Or both. Bitter, too. You don't need that.