Quotes from Roger Zelazny

Hell, we make our own ifs. I had better things to think about than what could have happened

If they come upon one who still has not seen it and they speak to him of fire, he does not know what they mean. So they, in turn, fall back upon telling him what fire is like. As they do so, they know from their own experience that what they are telling him is not the truth, but only a part of it. They know that this man will never know reality from their words, though all the words in the world are theirs to use.

And the secret is, I lowered my voice, as at a poetry reading, he was right! It is vanity, it is pride! It is the hubris of rationalism to always attack the prophet, the mystic, the god. It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us.

All roads lead to Amber, he said, as though it were an axiom.

I just want to sleep the sleep of ages, to know again the Great Rest, the perpetual bliss, to hear the songs the stars sing on the shores of the great sea.

And then the night wind, cool through arches of the years, came hounding after me.

Much of the world is illusion, yet the forms of that illusion follow a pattern which is a part of divine reality.

The thing had been quite unpremeditated on my part. I had not even thought of her as a woman until she came into my arms and revised my thinking on the subject.

I? I am nothing, replied the other. A leaf caught in a whirlpool, perhaps. A feather in the wind...

Now I just want to sleep the sleep of ages, to know again the Great Rest, the perpetual bliss, to hear the songs the stars sing on the shores of the great sea.

We followed it to the right until it turned left.

Far below, the ocean was a bluegray rug being pulled out from beneath us.

All progress demands payment. These are the growing pains of which you speak, not the final results. Fool! There is no such thing as progress! Not as you see it! What good are all the machines and ideas you unloose in their cultures, if you do not change the men themselves?

I've always been impulsive. My thinking is usually pretty good, but I always seem to do it after I do my talking—by which time I've generally destroyed all basis for further conversation.

The function of criticism should not be confused with the function of reform.

I know no gods, but if any care to be with us, I welcome them.

The entire universe is a revelation, said the monk. All things change, yet all things remain. Day follows night... each day is different, yet each is day. Much of the world is illusion, yet the forms of that illusion follow a pattern which is a part of divine reality.

Really. It can't be as bad as all that," she said. "Bad? Good and evil are always mixed up. It provides order.

I'm all right now," I said, "but leave me alone. I'm going down to the river to bathe." I took seven steps, and then someone must have pulled out the plug, because I gurgled, everything swirled, and the world ran away down the drain.

I enjoy slaughtering beasts, he said, and I think of my relatives constantly.

I came to pray; mocking, I stay.

I wish that some time, long ago, something had not been said that was said, or something done that was not done. Something, had we known, which might have let him grow differently, something which would have seen him become another man than the bitter, bent thing I saw up there. It is best now if he is dead. But it is a waste of something that might have been.

But it is written that it is better to burn one city than to curse the darkness.

The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown.