Top 79 Quotes & Sayings by Jack Vance

But I've sure worked at jobs where I have been under inspection.

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

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

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.

I haven't been to a movie since somebody gave me free tickets to Star Wars, which I went to.

I got done writing Ports of Call and suddenly realized I have far too much material for the book.

It seems to limit you; when you're working in an office, you're a creature in a small cell under somebody's supervision and surveillance.

I never worked in an office in my life.

A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone's written the story. He's supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment.

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

This flattery has been rather slow in coming. I think all of sudden late in life now I'm getting some credit for what I've done. Which is gratifying, but it's kind of a little late.

I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell.

In fact, almost every job you get somebody watching you.

The story was such that I couldn't make a graceful ending and then make a graceful new beginning. I could have, but I didn't want to. So, it isn't the most graceful way of writing a story. This new story is, I think, is pretty good stuff. I'm pleased with it anyway.

There was a writer in the '20s called Christopher Morley, who I remember a little bit of, who had some influence on me, but I couldn't tell you what it was.

As I mentioned, I was a carpenter for a time.

So I'll write it, and then I'll find out that I actually wrote something that is utterly useless. You can't use it in the story and it doesn't fit. So I just throw it away. I've done that countless times.

I worked for half a cent a word. I'm not a fast writer to begin with, so for the first few years I had do other things.

I'd never been published when I was young.

Well, I think everything I've ever read contributes to the background from which I write.

I never made lots of money at it, but I sold enough.

These are just the tip of the iceberg, because I read and read and read. I read everything.

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 was a carpenter for a time and everybody watches what you do.

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.

I haven't sold to the movies. In other words, I haven't gotten any enormous checks yet.

I thought that automobiles were going to have mufflers and go fast and airplanes were going to fly fast.

But, for instance, when I was awfully young, I read all the Oz books. They were an enormous influence on me.

I was an omnivore at reading, so that everything I ever read contributed.

If religions are diseases of the human psyche, as the philosopher Grintholde asserts, then religious wars must be reckoned the resultant sores and cankers infecting the aggregate corpus of the human race. Of all wars, these are the most detestable, since they are waged for no tangible gain, but only to impose a set of arbitrary credos upon another's mind.

Count me not your friend but the enemy of your enemies.

Law cannot reach where enforcement will not follow. —Popular aphorism.

A barbarian is not aware that he is a barbarian.

Human interactions, stimulated as they are by disequilibrium, never achieve balance. In even the most favorable transaction, one party whether he realizes it or not must always come out the worse.

The life we've been leading couldn't last forever. It's a wonder it lasted as long as it did.

An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.

What is an evil man? The man is evil who coerces obedience to his private ends, destroys beauty, produces pain, extinguishes life.

What are your fees?" inquired Guyal cautiously. "I respond to three questions," stated the augur. "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue.

Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.

I become drunk as circumstances dictate.

The inscrutability [of economics] is perhaps not unintentional. It gives endless employment to dialecticians who otherwise might become public charges or, at very worst, swindlers and tricksters.

Good music always defeats bad luck

Vance has a genius in evoking the beauty of strangeness, the strangeness of beauty.

I know that the history of man is not his technical triumphs, his kills, his victories. It is a composite, a mosaic of a trillion pieces, the account of each man's accommodation with his conscience. This is the true history of the race.

Beauty compelled admiration and erotic yearning; such was its organic function. But never by itself could it command love.

Somebody else's ignorance is bliss.

Happiness is fugitive; dissatisfaction and boredom are real.

While we are alive we should sit among colored lights and taste good wines, and discuss our adventures in far places; when we are dead, the opportunity is past.

It is useless, after all, to complain against inexorable reality.

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

I understand the gist of your speculation,' said Rhialto. 'It is most likely nuncupatory.

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.

I suspect that the word (art) was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.

The less a writer discusses his work and himself the better. The master chef slaughters no chickens in the dining room; the doctor writes prescriptions in Latin; the magician hides his hinges, mirrors, and trapdoors with the utmost care.

Freedom, privileges, options, must constantly be exercised, even at the risk of inconvenience.

I suffer from a spiritual malaise which manifests itself in outbursts of vicious rage.

Nothing is more conspicuous than a farting princess.

Beauty is a luster which love bestows to guile the eye. Therefore it may be said that only when the brain is without love will the eye look and see no beauty.

I categorically declare first my absolute innocence, second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies.