Quotes from Jack Vance

Gontwitz studied Moncrief for a long moment. "Doubtless you are a deep-dyed scholar and a past master of poodle-de-doodle; also, you have read several books. Still, your knowledge of Star Home is a muddle and your theories are bunk.

Hold, hold, hold! came a new voice. Hold, hold, hold. My charms and tokens, an ill day for Thorsingol ... But then, avaunt, you ghost, back to the orifice, back and avaunt, avaunt, I say! Go, else I loose the actinics; trespass is not allowed, by supreme command from the Lycurgat; aye, the Lycurgat of Thorsingol. Avaunt, so then.

Eat and drink without stint. He who can and does pay is a customer. He who cannot and does not pay is a guest of the establishment.

There is too much knowledge already in the world; we use facts as crutches, logic is deceit. I know a single system of communication: the declaiming of poetry.

I am Chun the Unavoidable. Tonight, O Lith, tonight it is two long bright threads for you.

Smade's patrons were diverse: explorers, locaters, Jarnell technicians, private agents in search of lost men or stolen treasure, more rarely an IPCC representative, or "weasel", in the argot of the Beyond. Others were folk more dire, and these were of as many sorts as there were crimes to be named. Making a virtue of necessity, Smade presented the same face to all.

LOCAL ORDINANCES STRICTLY ENFORCED. OBSTREPERY FORBIDDEN. WINKLERS AND SKATIFINCHES BE WARNED! ALL ATTEMPTS AT INSEMINATION MUST BE LICENSED. DANCERS ARE ENJOINED TO GRACE AND DIGNITY; THESE TRAITS ARE APPROVED, SINCE THEY CONTRIBUTE TO THE BEAUTY OF THE DANCE.

Not far off his line of fission was the star Cygnus T342, and its planet Euville where an unpleasant and psychotic population lived in five cities: Oni, Me, Che, Dun and Ve, each compulsively built in pentagonal patterns, from the central five-sided citadel. The space-port, on a remote island, was opprobriously named "Orifice".

Cory said abruptly: 'Enough of these trials and tests; clearly you all are competent at slitting throats and drowning old women. Whether you can achieve more strenuous acts remains to be seen. Now then: seat yourselves, and give me all your attention, and I will tell you what I expect of you. Landlord, bring us ale, then step from the room, as we wish to make private conversation.

Deeming the unsubstantiated dogma of a localized religious cult to be an undignified and unsuitable base on which to erect the chronology of galactic man, the members of this convention hereby declare that time shall now be reckoned from the year 2000 A.D. (Old System), which becomes the year 0. The revolution of Earth about Sol remains the standard annual unit. — Declaration at the Oikumenical Convention for the Standardization of Units and Meters

Sir Julian Hove was, to use the most comprehensive term, a martinet. He was likewise a man utterly without humor.

They are talented villains, and each is unique. That one is Kegan the Celt. That is Este the Sweet, who might be the Roman he claims to be. There stands Travec the Dacian; there Galgus the Daut, and that misshapen wad of pure evil yonder is Izmael the Hun. They know two motivations only: fear and avarice.

Tanjecterly may be no more than one of Twitten's idle fables; his caprices and pranks are well documented elsewhere. On the other hand, the almanac is said to be a work of great complexity and inner coherence, which would seem to lend the volume credence.

Sir Pom-pom gave a scornful grunt. 'As for me, I am bored with this constant trudging through the dust! The roads never end; they simply join into another road, so that a wanderer never comes to his journey's end.' 'That is the nature of the vagabond.

A man is like a rope: both break at a definite strain....The solution is not splicing the rope; it's lessening the tension.

Sometimes some of these little side excursions are useful and I manage to fit them in the book somewhere.

I give dignity second place to expedience.

I do read books. I suppose it's more or less the same thing, but at least I'm alone and I'm an individual. I can stop anytime I want, which I frequently do.

I don't read other science fiction. I don't read any at all.

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.

But Roy Rockwood, it was science fiction for the sake of science fiction.

Then there was Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote for Weird Tales and who had a wild imagination. He wasn't a very talented writer, but his imagination was wonderful.

But I'm so slow on it because I find it terribly hard writing blind on computers. The computer speaks to me, but it's just so slow, I'm so terribly slow using it.

Good music always defeats bad luck.