Quotes from Jack Vance

How I hate you, he said softly. If hate were stone I could build a tower into the clouds.

The Vine of Life grows a single melon. The color of the heart is unknown until the rind is split.

T'sain shrugged. "I have lived little, and I am not wise. Yet I know that everyone is entitled to life.

Conversation! Supple sentences, with first and second meanings and overtones beyond, outrageous challenges with cleverly planned slip-points, rebuttals of elegant brevity; deceptions and guiles, patient explanations of the obvious, fleeting allusions to the unthinkable. As a preliminary, the conversationalist must gauge the mood, the intelligence and the verbal facility of the company. To this end, a few words of pedantic exposition often prove invaluable.

It is an unthinkable discrepancy that fifty-four men should consume the food intended for fifty-three.

Am I known as Cugel the Clever for nothing?

What great minds lie in the dust," said Guyal in a low voice. "What gorgeous souls have vanished into the buried ages; what marvellous creatures are lost past the remotest memory … Nevermore will there be the like; now in the last fleeting moments, humanity festers rich as rotten fruit. Rather than master and overpower our world, our highest aim is to cheat it through sorcery.

One becomes sated with platitudes no less than honey, so that one often breaks another's bones in one's vexation.

Excellent; all is well. The 'everlasting tedium' exactly countervenes the 'immediate onset of death' and I am left only with the 'canker' which, in the person of Firx, already afflicts me. One must use his wits in dealing with maledictions.

Two hours of loose philosophizing will never tilt the scale against the worth of one sound belch.

What is peace? Balance three iron skewers tip to tip, one upon the other; at the summit, emplace an egg, so that it too poises static in mid-air, and there you have the condition of peace in this world of men.

Uncertainty hurts more than ignorance.

Twango's hospitality, though largely symbolic, does him credit.

have been prisoner, slave, fugitive, and now king, which I prefer.

An enemy, perhaps. Ah, so simple. Liane will kill you ten men. Two steps forward, thrust — thus!" He lunged. "And souls go thrilling up like bubbles in a beaker of mead.

I hate you with the hate that I give to all the world; I love you with a feeling nothing else arouses.

A surfeit of honey cloys the tongue; a surfeit of wine addles the brain; so a surfeit of ease guts a man of strength.

I would offer congratulations were it not for this tentacle gripping my leg.

The pre-dawn air was quiet and cool; the sky showed the colors of citron, pearl, and apricot, which were reflected from the sea. Out from the Tumbling River estuary drifted the black ship Smaadra, propelled across the water by its sweeps. A mile offshore, the sweeps were shipped. The yards were raised, sails sheeted taut and back-stays set up. With the sunrise came breeze; the ship glided quickly and quietly into the east, and presently Troicinet had become a shadow along the horizon.

Death is the heritage of life; a man's vitality is like air in a bladder. Poinct this bubble and away, away, away, flees life, like the color of fading dream.

To move the rocks might yield magical treasures, or, more likely, some unimaginable woe.

Every story has, or should have, a mood: the connective tissue which holds the story together. In this regard some writers are adroit, others don't have a clue.

I give dignity second place to expedience," said Cugel.

You are evil like all existence. ... If power were mine I would crush the universe to bloody gravel and stamp into the ultimate muck!