Quotes from Roger Zelazny

I've always been impulsive. My thinking is usually pretty good, but I always seem to do it after I do my talking—by

Now you know what an absolute monarchy is she explained to Bill. You can see how power corrupts. I was corrupt before I had power, Random said, and rich is better.

Why should I suddenly remember 1905 and Paris on the shadow Earth, save that I was very happy that year and I might, reflectively, have sought an antidote for the present?

I just noticed I am morbid and drunk and bitter. I don't need that.

Personality is the one thing we cannot control in our manipulations of Shadow. In fact, it is the means by which we can tell one another from the shadows of ourselves. This is why Flora could not decide about me for so long, back on the Shadow Earth: my new personality was sufficiently different.

Battle is not a game, and I had no desire to make myself available to any presumptuous ass who thought otherwise.

The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three.

He had fathered a great brood of us without providing for a proper succession, he had been less than kind to all of our mothers and he then expected our devotion and support. He played favorites and, in fact, it even seemed he played us off against one another. He then got suckered into something he could not handle and left the kingdom in a mess.

we avoided their swarms by putting one foot in front of another without pause and making noises of our own. We didn't step on anybody who squashed.

A few drops of hope fell upon my heart.

Overhead, spiece of the night came loose, dropping from the top of a high boulder which leaned from the right.

I walked among Shadows, and found a race of furry creatures, dark and clawed and fanged, reasonably man-like, and about as intelligent as a freshman in the high school of your choice—sorry, kids, but what I mean is they were loyal, devoted, honest, and too easily screwed by bastards like me and my brother. I felt like the dee-jay of your choice.

My children, I cannot say that I am entirely pleased with you, but I suppose this works both ways. Let it be. I leave you with my blessing, which is more than a formality.

All right. You wanted me," I stated, "and now you have me, heaven help you.

You forgive me?" he said. "You, who left me in that tower, who put a knife into my side? Thank you, sister. It is very kind of you to forgive me, but excuse me if I decline.

Their voices lack the thrust and dip of men chewing over their words and tasting them. They

You are the only ones who can appreciate my triumph.

Do you know what lies beyond the advancing winds? Chaos.

Sangre de Cristo foothills rising up to Santa Fe Baldy, a great gray-topped mound of a mountain, its summit often graced by snow. As described in the interview, this peak helped inspire his novella "24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai.

Do you honestly think I am going to let you die? I need you-as many of you as I can save.

This is because one can never be sure whether wisdom produces or merely locates, and the Prince is wise.

positing infinity, the rest is easy

Or supposing humans had developed different abilities than those they have now and had learned magic rather than, say, calculus . .

The man in green was seated on a rock. His bow and quiver lay beside him on the ground. He flashed an evil smile in my direction.