Jack Vance quotes - page 4

I may be called upon to address the company. No one will listen, of course, which is just as well, since I have nothing to say. (Jack Vance)
I distrusted him from the start! Still, who could imagine such protean depravity?" Bunderwal, the supercargo, concurred. "Cugel, while plausible, nonetheless is a bit of a scoundrel. View quote
Jack Vance
Kergan Banbeck threw up his hands, turned once more to the sacerdote. "How can I halt his nonsense? How can I make him see reason? The sacerdote reflected. "He speaks not nonsense, but rather a language you fail to understand. You can make him understand your language by erasing all knowledge and training from his mind, and replacing it with patterns of your own.”. View quote
Jack Vance
I can now report that the mathematics of the multiple focus are a most improbable thicket, and the useful service I enforced upon what I must call an absurd set of contradictions is one of my secrets. I know that thousands of scientists, at home and abroad, are attempting to duplicate my work; they are welcome to the effort. None will succeed. Why do I speak so positively? That is my other secret. View quote
Jack Vance
It was right and proper to exploit the excellences of the moment, but still, when conditions reached an apex, there was nowhere to go but down. View quote
Jack Vance
Gassoon, for all his lore, subscribed to a common fallacy: he assumed that all those whom he encountered appraised him in the same terms as he did himself. View quote
Jack Vance
Tell me, then! What is so important?” "Your life! I could not bear that you should lose it!” "I feel much the same. Say on. View quote
Jack Vance
I fear, Master Zamp, that you are a victim to your own perfervid imagination. View quote
Jack Vance
The creature displayed the qualities reminiscent of both coelenterate and echinoderm. A terrene nudibranch? A mollusc deprived of its shell? More importantly, was the creature edible? View quote
Jack Vance
Dismount and kneel before me, that I may strike off your head with fullest ease. You shall die in this tragic golden light of sunset. View quote
Jack Vance
The crime,” said the Jacynth softly, "is abstract and fundamental: the innate depravity of extinguishing life. (Jack Vance)
Navigation on this lake is forbidden to aliens,” he declared. "We are ordered to sink all intruding vessels. Prepare to drown. View quote
Jack Vance
We are supposed to set you a good example,” said Devonet. "As a start, I will point out that a lady of refinement would not wish to be found so high in a tree.” "Then I am a lady of refinement well and truly,” said Madouc, "since I did not wish to be found. View quote
Jack Vance
Ah! Five hundred years I have toiled to entice this creature, despairing, doubting, brooding by night, yet never abandoning hope that my calculations were accurate and my great talisman cogent. Then, when finally it appears, you fall upon it for no other reason than to sate your repulsive gluttony! View quote
Jack Vance
The merchant voiced an inarticulate protest. Glystra glared at him, "Do you think I trust you?” "Trust?” said the merchant with a puzzled expression. "Trust? What word is that?” And he tested it several times more. View quote
Jack Vance
Speaking our language, you will understand us-and if you can think as another man thinks, you cannot dislike him. View quote
Jack Vance
The town's lack of special quirks was almost a peculiarity in itself. View quote
Jack Vance
You have frightened and daunted me. I will stop stealing at once. View quote
Jack Vance
Consider the human mind! It is capable of amazing feats when used properly. Conversely, without exercise it atrophies to a lump of gray-yellow fat. View quote
Jack Vance
And, stretching in languid warmth, she contrived to twist her body into first one luxurious position, then another. View quote
Jack Vance
Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience. Otherwise they fall into desuetude and become unfashionable, unorthodox-finally irregulationary. (Jack Vance)
Here you see the pattern from which my great work is derived. It expresses the symbolic significance of NULLITY to which TOTALITY must necessarily attach itself, by Kratinjae's Second Law of Cryptorrhoid Affinities, with which you are possibly familiar. View quote
Jack Vance
And I understand they are, in a sense, artists? That is to say, they understand the creative process, the sublimation of fact to symbol and the use of symbol to suggest emotion? View quote
Jack Vance
He must approach the subject critically, alert for contradictions, pedantry and vagueness. View quote
Jack Vance
I challenge Destiny, yes, but I do not leap off cliffs. View quote
Jack Vance