Quotes from Michael Moorcock

Man may trust man, Prince Elric, but perhaps we'll never have a truly sane world until men learn to trust mankind.

Because the Eternal Champion sequence contains comedies does not mean that I am satirising those stories which are tragic and romantic. We're diverse creatures and for me the Eternal Champion must reflect and embrace that diversity. Chaos Theory, perhaps the most important intellectual advance in many years, suggests that in diversity we flourish and the fewer choices we have the poorer are our chances of survival.

Corum stood over the corpse of his mother, the gentle Princess Colatalarna. His first blow split the forehead of the leading horse and it fell, dragging the others down with it.

Now Elric was caught up in a kind of intradimensional hurricane, in which a thousand reverses ocurred within his brain at once and he became a thousand other creatures for an instant, and where he lived through more than ten other lives; a fate only minimally different from the one that was familiar to him; and so vast did the multiverse become, so unthinkable, that he began to go mad as he attempted to make sense of just a fraction of what laid siege to his sanity.

You are not. You believe that sword to be part of your identity but it is not. It is your nemesis. It is the part of you which represents your weakness, not your strength.

It is our firm belief that we shall one day learn the plan of the entire multiverse and travel at will from Sphere to Sphere, from realm to realm, from world to world, travel through the great clouds of shifting, multicoloured stars, the tumbling planets in all their millions, through galaxies that swarm like gnats in a summer garden, and rivers of light–glory beyond glory–pathways of moonbeams between the roaming stars.

I am a petty god at the moment. You will find me more lordly and benign when I achieve the position of a greater god.

And how shall you pay, gentlemen?" enquired Elric politely, still smiling.

When I had first been hurled into the world of the 1970s I had thought I found Utopia. And now I was discovering that it was only a Utopia for some. Shaw wanted a Utopia which would exist for all.

In gold—in gems," answered Pilarmo. "In chains," said Elric. "We free travelers need no chains of that sort." Moonglum bent forward out of the shadows where he sat, his expression showing that he strongly disapproved of Elric's statement.

As I believe I observed earlier,' said the albino prince to the still-cowed Gaynor, 'the most powerful of beings are not necessarily the most intelligent, nor, indeed, sane, nor well-mannered. The more one knows of the gods, the more one learns this fundamental lesson…

Elric knew; that to compromise with Tyranny is always to be destroyed by it. The sanest and most logical choice lay always in resistance. This knowledge gave Elric his strength – his profound anger at injustice and inequality

it was possible to live in harmony with mortals of all persuasions and remain vital and engaged with the world. These things he would neither sell nor offer for sale

Arjavh whom, at that moment, I hated with a terrible hatred. I hated him because I must fight this battle and possibly kill him.

And, tortured by his own weakness, Theleb K'aarna, sorcerer of Pan Tang, left. Elric of Melniboné was in Bakshaan—and Elric had sworn several oaths of vengeance upon Theleb K'aarna on several separate occasions—in Lormyr, Nadsokor and Tanelorn, as well as in Jharkor. In his heart, the black-bearded sorcerer knew who would win any duel which might take place.

He combed his milk-white hair and crooned a tune to himself, clipped on his yellow chamois shoulder holster and stepped out into the soft night and his smooth car. As he drove, he considered the stars. It would all be over in a flash.

You Mabden seem to think that happiness must be bought with misery... It is not easy for Vadhagh to understand that. We believe -- believed -- that happiness was a natural condition of reasoning beings.

Once, a moonbeam glanced off silver, illuminating the dark silhouette of Elric, but, as if repelled by the sight of a living creature on that bleak hill, the moon once again slunk behind its cloud-shield, leaving Elric thinking deeply. Leaving Elric in the darkness he desired. Thunder rumbled over distant mountains, sounding like the laughter of far-off gods. Elric shivered, pulled his blue cloak more tightly about him, and continued to stare over the misted lowlands.

Moonglum licked his long lips. "So it's sorcery again. In truth, Elric, this whole country is beginning to stink of wizardry and the minions of hell." Elric murmured for his friend's ears: "No hell-beings these—but honest elementals, equally powerful in many ways. Curb your belly-fear, Moonglum—a little more simple conjuring and Theleb K'aarna will have no desire to retaliate.

He was like some possessed demigod of the darkest legends of her people and her love of him turned to terror.

Once, it was said, the whole city had been sentient, the most intelligent being in the universe, but now it was senile and even its memories were fragmented.

We could not bring back the Golden Age. Indeed we were now paying the price of having enjoyed one.

It only seems complicated because it is strange,' Corum said. 'Your world would doubtless seem incomprehensible to me of I were suddenly flung into it.

A Holy War! What better than righteous piety to disguise over-reaching greed?